Loss of dominant caterpillar genera in a protected tropical forest

ABSTRACT Reports of biodiversity loss have increasingly focused on the abundance and diversity of insects, but it is still unclear if substantive insect diversity losses are occurring in intact low-latitude forests. We collected 22 years of plant-caterpillar-parasitoid data in a protected tropical f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inbioRxiv
Main Authors Salcido, Danielle M, ister, Matthew L, Humberto Garcia Lopez, Dyer, Lee A
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 13.09.2019
Subjects
Biodiversity
Ecosystems
Lepidoptera
Parasitism
Parasitoids
Plant protection
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Summary:ABSTRACT Reports of biodiversity loss have increasingly focused on the abundance and diversity of insects, but it is still unclear if substantive insect diversity losses are occurring in intact low-latitude forests. We collected 22 years of plant-caterpillar-parasitoid data in a protected tropical forest and found reductions in diversity and density of these insects that appear to be partly driven by a changing climate and weather anomalies. The decline in parasitism represents a reduction in an important ecosystem service: enemy control of primary consumers. The consequences of these changes are in many cases irreversible and are likely to be mirrored in nearby forests; overall declines in the region will have negative consequences for surrounding agriculture. The decline of important tropical taxa and associated ecosystem function illuminates the consequences of numerous threats to global insect diversity and provides additional impetus for research on tropical diversity. Footnotes * Statement of Authorship/Contributions: D.M.S., L.A.D., H.G.L. conceived project and supervised field work. D.M.S., L.A.D., M.F. analyzed data and wrote manuscript. Parasitoid illustrations by M.L.F. * Data and materials availability: Should the manuscript be accepted, the data supporting the results will be archived in an appropriate public repository and the data DOI will be included at the end of the article. * Title page and abstract shortened/modified to satisfy requirements of journal we most recently submitted to. Additional sentences added to paragraph 2 of introduction. Added results on line 94-95 and 108-110. Tested new SEMs models testing causal hypotheses between climate and species/interaction richness SEMs and updated accordingly in Fig. 4 & Fig. S10-11. Results for these SEMs required substantial edits to results section of main text (lines 139-147). Added references #48-54. Made minor edits to figure captions.
DOI:10.1101/631028