What can supraspecies richness tell us?

Abstract

Biogeographers, ecologists, palaeontologists, and conservation managers often deal with checklists in which not all individuals have been identified to a species level, or the accuracy of species identification is questionable. Is it possible and credible to investigate species richness based on such checklists? Studies on macrofauna in the Far Eastern seas, eastern Arctic seas, and adjacent waters of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans suggest that in different habitats and for diverse taxa, species, and higher taxa richness strongly correlate with each other and increase with an expansion in the study area and sample size according to the species–area law. Such an increase is higher in the bottom zone than in the pelagic. Species and higher taxa richness also show a decrease from lower to higher latitudes, which is in line with the Humboldt–Wallace’s law. According to Willis’ law and self‐similarity in the organisation of taxonomic levels, species richness can be assessed based on the genus, family, and order richness. In other words, supraspecies richness itself can tell us the same as species richness and therefore certain global patterns revealed at the species level may also be revealed at the supraspecies level. Such a concordance in general trends among richness parameters at different taxonomic levels in practice implies that species richness can be studied based on lists that lack species identifications or lists with doubtful species identification. We suggest bolder use of supraspecies richness in science and practice, discussing the disadvantages and advantages of this approach.

Emergent landscapes of research publishing

“…Another paper in this issue focuses on what supraspecies richness can reveal. Studies on “macrofauna in the Far Eastern seas, eastern Arctic seas, and adjacent waters of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans” provide insights on correlations among habitat, higher taxa, and species, according to Igor Volvenko et al (2023, p. 503). Their supposition is that certain laws known to exist at the species level might be discoverable at the supraspecies level and that ideas about supraspecies richness would benefit work in several disciplines allied to geography.…”

Positive effects of two decades of passive ecological restoration in a historically polluted marine site

“…Taxa richness was estimated by the DIVERSE routine in PRIMER7 (Clarke and Gorley, 2006). As species and higher taxa richness strongly correlate with each other (Volvenko et al, 2023), species richness can be assessed using genus, family, or order richness and here taxa richness was calculated using the level of family, as in other studies (Cooper and Barry, 2017;De Smet et al, 2017;Bevilacqua et al, 2018). The AZTI Marine Biotic Index (AMBI, Borja et al, 2000) and Multivariate AMBI indices (M-AMBI, Carvalho et al, 2006;Dauvin and Ruellet, 2007;Cai et al, 2014;Tweedley et al, 2015) were calculated to assess the environmental status of the different communities according to condition, transects, and depths.…”