Plant diversity accurately predicts insect diversity in two tropical landscapes

Plant diversity surely determines arthropod diversity, but only moderate correlations between arthropod and plant species richness had been observed until Basset et al. (Science, 338, 2012 and 1481) finally undertook an unprecedentedly comprehensive sampling of a tropical forest and demonstrated tha...

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Published inMolecular ecology Vol. 25; no. 17; pp. 4407 - 4419
Main Authors Zhang, Kai, Lin, Siliang, Ji, Yinqiu, Yang, Chenxue, Wang, Xiaoyang, Yang, Chunyan, Wang, Hesheng, Jiang, Haisheng, Harrison, Rhett D., Yu, Douglas W.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2016
Subjects
Animals
Arthropoda
Biodiversity
biomonitoring
China
DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic
host specificity
insect-plant interactions
Insecta - classification
Insects
Landscape ecology
Plant ecology
Plants - classification
surrogate species
Tropical Climate
biodiversity
biomonitoring
host specificity
surrogate species
Arthropoda
insect-plant interactions
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Summary:Plant diversity surely determines arthropod diversity, but only moderate correlations between arthropod and plant species richness had been observed until Basset et al. (Science, 338, 2012 and 1481) finally undertook an unprecedentedly comprehensive sampling of a tropical forest and demonstrated that plant species richness could indeed accurately predict arthropod species richness. We now require a high‐throughput pipeline to operationalize this result so that we can (i) test competing explanations for tropical arthropod megadiversity, (ii) improve estimates of global eukaryotic species diversity, and (iii) use plant and arthropod communities as efficient proxies for each other, thus improving the efficiency of conservation planning and of detecting forest degradation and recovery. We therefore applied metabarcoding to Malaise‐trap samples across two tropical landscapes in China. We demonstrate that plant species richness can accurately predict arthropod (mostly insect) species richness and that plant and insect community compositions are highly correlated, even in landscapes that are large, heterogeneous and anthropogenically modified. Finally, we review how metabarcoding makes feasible highly replicated tests of the major competing explanations for tropical megadiversity.
Bibliography:University of East Anglia
Fig. S1 Same-site predictions. Scatterplot of plant-model (25 candidate functions) estimates vs. non-parametric estimates of total OTU richness. Fig. S2 Same-site predictions. Scatterplot of plant-model estimates vs. non-parametric estimates of total OTU richness in the (a) forests and (b) open land in Mengsong. Fig. S3 Same-site predictions. Fig. S4 Same-site predictions. Fig. S5 Cross-site predictions. Fig. S6 Procrustes superimposition plots between plant and insect order communities in Yinggeling. Fig. S7 Procrustes superimposition plots between plant and insect order communities in (a) wet and (b) dry seasons of Mengsong. Table S1 Procrustes correlations among plant, Insecta, and insect order communities in the forests of Mengsong (n = 22) (9999 permutations), with the input of non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordinations calculated from binary Jaccard dissimilarities (k = 4).Appendix S1 R Markdown output.
BMZ - No. 08.7860.3-001.00; No. 13.1432.7-001.00
ArticleID:MEC13770
National Natural Science Foundation of China - No. 31400470; No. 41661144002
Ministry of Science and Technology of China - No. 2012FY110800
GIZ
Kunming Institute of Zoology - No. GREKF13-13; No. GREKF14-13; No. GREKF16-09
istex:D6B1776BB12D485DD2CEFA74BB0BC37BC0866043
Government of the Federal Republic of Germany
State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution
ark:/67375/WNG-9T4V9K96-Z
ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-3
content type line 23
ObjectType-Review-1
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:0962-1083
1365-294X
DOI:10.1111/mec.13770