Patterns of diversity in a metacommunity of bees and wasps of relictual mountainous forest fragments

Aim The island species–area relationship (ISAR) quantifies how the number of species increases as the area of an island or island‐like habitat gets larger and is one of the most general patterns in ecology. However, studies that measure the ISAR often confound variation in sampling methodology and analyses, precluding appropriate syntheses of its underlying mechanisms. Most ISAR studies use only presence–absence data at the whole‐island scale, whereas we planned to use a framework that applies individual‐based rarefaction to synthesize whether and how the ISAR differs from the null expectation of the passive sampling hypothesis. Location Five hundred and five islands from 34 different archipelagos across the world, including oceanic islands, lake islands and forest islands. Major taxa studied Local assemblages of plants, invertebrates, herpetofauna, birds and mammals. Methods We collated local‐scale species abundance data from multiple archipelagos (median of 12 islands per study) and used a rarefaction‐based approach to synthesize the relationship between island size and (1) sample effort‐controlled rarefied species richness, or (2) an effective number of species derived from the probability of interspecific encounter (an index of community evenness). Results When we applied rarefaction to control for sampling effort, the numbers of species and their relative abundances across all studies differed from the passive sampling hypothesis. Our measure of evenness also increased with island size, suggesting that the disproportionate effects we observed influenced both rarer and more common species. We found few associations between the slope of this effect and island type or taxon, but we did find that island archipelagos with greater elevational heterogeneity also deviated more from the null expectation than those with less heterogeneity. Main conclusions Using a synthetic approach across island archipelagos, we reject the null expectation that passive sampling causes the ISAR and instead suggest that ecological mechanisms leading to disproportionate (non‐random) effects on larger relative to smaller islands are predominant.

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“…(2017); Perillo et al. (2020; data in the paper by Perillo (2017); Pierce et al. (2003); Puspitasari (2016); Rangasamy et al.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Synthesis reveals that island species–area relationships emerge from processes beyond passive sampling

Gooriah

Blowes

Sagouis

et al. 2021

Global Ecol Biogeogr

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“…Still, a greater richness of social wasps within the Espinhaço Range was recovered in relation to both studies already carried out in the area. However, six of the eleven species caught in the survey in "Campos Rupestres" of Bahia (Silva-Pereira & Santos 2006) and four of the thirteen species in mountainous forest fragments (Perillo et al 2020) were not recorded for the EAP. This is expected since the altitude and main vegetation coverage are different, but still suggests that the wasp fauna varies greatly along the Range.…”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

“…So far, only two studies on vespids within this geographical formation have been carried out (Silva-Pereira & Santos 2006;Perillo et al 2020). This leaves the great majority of the formation unexplored and thus, a survey in different areas presenting different biomes should bring about a greater idea of the species present in the Espinhaço Range.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As for the study in Atlantic Forest (Hermes & Köhler 2004), 37 species were recorded. Perillo et al (2020) attempted to survey eumenines in the Espinhaço Range but collected only one unidentified specimen. Among the collected eumenines in the present study, Pararhaphidoglossa confluenta (Fox, 1899) consists of a new record for the Minas Gerais State and is the species' southernmost record.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Checklist of the Vespidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera) of an area with Cerrado and Atlantic Forest in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Lopes

2020

Entomol Commun

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With the goal of knowing the vespid fauna of the region, weekly samplings were carried out in the Estação Ambiental de Peti, São Gonçalo do Rio Abaixo, Minas Gerais, Brazil. This reserve is inside the Espinhaço Range and is marked by an ecotone formation of Cerrado and Atlantic Forest in its domain. Two Malaise traps were used: one was set in an Atlantic Forest area and the other in Cerrado vegetation. The collecting lasted one year, from April 2002 to April 2003. A total of 553 vespids of 28 species distributed in 11 genera were collected, of which 18 were Polistinae and 10 Eumeninae. The most frequent species were Agelaia myrmecophila (Ducke, 1905), A. multipicta (Haliday, 1836), Polybia flavifrons Smith, 1857 and Mischocyttarus rotundicollis (Cameron, 1912). The abundance was highest in the wet period only for the Polistinae in Atlantic Forest and Eumeninae in Cerrado. Another 18 species were found to occur in the area but were not collected by Malaise traps. The study revealed two species recorded for the first time in the State of Minas Gerais: Pararhaphidoglossa confluenta (Fox, 1899) and Zethus dubius Smith, 1857.

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“…Unlike oceanic islands, which are surrounded by a matrix that is a barrier to most terrestrial fauna, forest islands have more permeable matrices that harbor an important percentage of fauna (Cook et al, 2004;Driscoll, 2005;Yekwayo et al, 2016) and provide additional resources to species (Öckinger et al, 2012). In such systems, that occur immersed in grassland-dominated ecosystems on tropical mountaintops (Streher et al, 2017), vagile organisms like wasps, bees, dung beetles and fruit-feeding butterflies can seek different resources (da Silva et al, 2019;Perillo et al, 2020;Silva et al, 2020), where habitat diversity and configuration of the landscape may elicit different responses among them (Neves et al, 2021). Although the distribution of host plants at a given scale represents food resource availability and physical structure for herbivorous insects to find shelter and breeding sites (Lewinsohn and Roslin, 2008), evidence of this relationship in forests patches at landscape scales and its effects on herbivorous insect communities is still poorly documented (Rossetti et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatiotemporal Distribution of Herbivorous Insects Along Always-Green Mountaintop Forest Islands

Kuchenbecker

Macedo-Reis

Fagundes

et al. 2021

Front. For. Glob. Change

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Insects make up the bulk of terrestrial diversity and about half of insect species are herbivores that have direct relationships with their host plants and are the basis of the entire food chain, on which wildlife and humanity depend. Some herbivorous insect traits, such as their spatio-temporal distribution, are especially relevant in the current scenario of global changes, which are more pronounced in high elevation areas, helping to improve the effectiveness of conservation actions. Here we evaluated the influence that different spatiotemporal scales have on three free-feeding herbivorous insect guilds (fluid-feeding, leaf-chewing, and xylophagous insects) in montane forest islands immersed in a grassland-dominated matrix (campo rupestre). We assessed whether species turnover or nestedness was the main component determining both spatial and temporal species composition variation (β-diversity) of the herbivorous insect community. We also checked the temporal effect on herbivorous insect guilds composition between vertical strata. We sampled herbivorous insects during two summers and two winters in 14 forest islands of different sizes and shapes in a natural mountainous fragment located in southeastern Brazil. A total of 6597 herbivorous insects representing 557 morphospecies were sampled, 290 of which were fluid-feeding, 147 leaf-chewing and 120 xylophagous insects. We found a main contribution of time scale in the organization of the herbivorous insect composition sampled in this study, mainly by turnover, with small differences among guilds. Additionally, we could see that climate determined the local variation of species, corroborating that we have a highly variable always-green system over space and time where the understory community varies less in comparison to the canopy community. Our findings suggest that long-term ecological research on herbivorous community structure in relation to climatic variation is a key element for future investigations, which can be decisive for the conservation of herbivorous insect communities. We also suggest that the effects of anthropogenic pressures must be monitored in this system, since these forest islands may serve as warming refuges in a fragmented landscape holding an invaluable diversity of species that, without these old-growth forest reservoirs, would be doomed to disappear.

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Patterns of diversity in a metacommunity of bees and wasps of relictual mountainous forest fragments

Cited by 16 publications

References 74 publications

Synthesis reveals that island species–area relationships emerge from processes beyond passive sampling

Synthesis reveals that island species–area relationships emerge from processes beyond passive sampling

Checklist of the Vespidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera) of an area with Cerrado and Atlantic Forest in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Spatiotemporal Distribution of Herbivorous Insects Along Always-Green Mountaintop Forest Islands

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