Just bird food? – On the value of invertebrate macroecology

Beck, Jan; McCain, Christy M.

doi:10.21425/f5fbg47684

Cited by 14 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…However recently, functional diversity has also become more common in insect studies (Greenop et al, 2018;Woodcock et al, 2019;Guariento et al, 2020). Insects as a very species-rich group occupy multiple important niches that guarantee ecosystem functions and services, such as pollination, decomposition, herbivory and predation, as well as food supply for higher trophic levels (Greenop et al, 2018;Woodcock et al, 2019;Beck and McCain, 2020). At the same time, insect decline over the last decades can be observed at multiple scales (Habel et al, 2019a,b;Seibold et al, 2019) and has become a topic of public interest (Leather, 2018;Saunders, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualitative and Quantitative Loss of Habitat at Different Spatial Scales Affects Functional Moth Diversity

2021

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Land use change has led to large-scale insect decline, threatening ecosystem resilience through reduced functional diversity. Even in nature reserves, losses in insect diversity have been detected. Hereby, changes in local habitat quality and landscape-scale habitat quantity can play a role driving functional diversity toward erosion. Our aim was to analyze how local and landscape-scale factors simultaneously affect functional insect diversity. Therefore, we sampled moths in two Italian coastal forest reserves at 60 sites. Our focus was on functional richness, redundancy and niche occupation, being important for ecosystem resilience, following the insurance framework. Ecological information about 387 species and 14 traits was used to analyze functional diversity. Twenty-five functional groups were recognized and used to estimate niche occupation and redundancy. Fourteen local and 12 landscape-scale factors were measured and condensed by using Principal Components Analysis. The resulting PC-axes served as predictors in linear mixed effects models. Functional richness, redundancy and niche occupation of moths were lower at sites with low habitat quality and quantity, indicating reduced ecosystem resilience. Especially landscape diversity and habitat structure, viz. a humidity-nutrient gradient, but also plant diversity, were promoting functional richness. Landscape fragmentation, indicating increased impermeability for insects, reduced local functional richness, redundancy and niche occupation. Local habitat quality and landscape-wide habitat quantity are both important for maintaining functional insect diversity inside reserves. Therefore, small and isolated nature reserves might fail in preserving biodiversity and ecosystem functions through adverse effects acting from the surrounding landscape structure and configuration.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualitative and Quantitative Loss of Habitat at Different Spatial Scales Affects Functional Moth Diversity

2021

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“…For example, freshwater organisms would allow assessing the effect of different dispersal strategies (Bilton et al., 2001) on the anisotropy of assemblage variation. In sum, despite the marked underrepresentation of invertebrates in macroecological studies (Beck & McCain, 2020; Titley et al., 2017), the macroecological patterns of vertebrates do not seem representative of other taxa, as already suggested by previous studies (e.g. Weiser et al., 2018), and different processes seem to have contrasting relevance in controlling macroecological patterns in different biological groups.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Assessing the equilibrium between assemblage composition and climate: A directional distance‐decay approach

Baselga

Gómez‐Rodríguez

2021

Journal of Animal Ecology

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“…The observed decline in the body size of Neotropical moths relative to old-growth forest may have profound implications for the ecological functioning in disturbed forest habitats and even more so in oil palm plantations. With the degradation of moth faunas in diversity, abundance, and body size, more specialist insectivorous predators lose an important food source, so that food webs in highly disturbed tropical forest systems are seriously modified [ 41 ]. In contrast, although understory density within the closed old-growth forest varies between topographical types [ 6 , 14 ], differences between these forest types were too subtle and the habitat fidelity of most moth species was too limited to measurably influence community-wide moth size within intact rainforests at this small spatial scale.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trait Variation in Moths Mirrors Small-Scaled Ecological Gradients in A Tropical Forest Landscape

Rabl

Alonso‐Rodríguez

Brehm

et al. 2020

Insects

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Along environmental gradients, communities are expected to be filtered from the regional species pool by physical constraints, resource availability, and biotic interactions. This should be reflected in species trait composition. Using data on species-rich moth assemblages sampled by light traps in a lowland rainforest landscape in Costa Rica, we show that moths in two unrelated clades (Erebidae-Arctiinae; Geometridae) are much smaller-sized in oil palm plantations than in nearby old-growth forest, with intermediate values at disturbed forest sites. In old-growth forest, Arctiinae predominantly show aposematic coloration as a means of anti-predator defense, whereas this trait is much reduced in the prevalence in plantations. Similarly, participation in Müllerian mimicry rings with Hymenoptera and Lycidae beetles, respectively, is rare in plantations. Across three topographic types of old-growth forests, community-weighted means of moth traits showed little variation, but in creek forest, both types of mimicry were surprisingly rare. Our results emphasize that despite their mobility, moth assemblages are strongly shaped by local environmental conditions through the interplay of bottom–up and top–down processes. Assemblages in oil palm plantations are highly degraded not only in their biodiversity, but also in terms of trait expression.

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Just bird food? – On the value of invertebrate macroecology

Abstract: Highlights • In early large-scale ecological research, invertebrate studies were both plentiful and highly influential based on quantitative literature surveys, but they are under-represented in recent macroecological literature.

Cited by 14 publications

References 37 publications

Qualitative and Quantitative Loss of Habitat at Different Spatial Scales Affects Functional Moth Diversity

Qualitative and Quantitative Loss of Habitat at Different Spatial Scales Affects Functional Moth Diversity

Assessing the equilibrium between assemblage composition and climate: A directional distance‐decay approach

Trait Variation in Moths Mirrors Small-Scaled Ecological Gradients in A Tropical Forest Landscape

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