scholarly journals Co-occurrence variation explains the low host dependence of ambrosia beetles along altitude gradients in SW China

Author(s):  
Fang Luo ◽  
LINGZENG MENG ◽  
Jian Wang ◽  
Yan-Hong Liu

Abstract Background Separation of biotic and abiotic impacts on species diversity distribution patterns across a significant climatic gradient is a challenge in the study of diversity maintenance mechanisms. The basic task is to reconcile scale-dependent effects of abiotic and biotic processes on species distribution models. However, Eltonian noise hypothesis predicted that the effects of biotic interactions will be averaged out at macroscales, and there are many empirical observations that biotic interactions would constrain species distributions at micro-ecological scales. Here, we used a hierarchical modeling method to detect the host specificities of ambrosia beetles (Scolytinae and Platypodinae) with their dependent tree communities across a steep climatic gradient, which was embedded within a relatively homogenous spatial niche. Results Species turnover of both trees and ambrosia beetles have a relatively similar pattern, characterized by the climatic proxy at a regional scale, but not at local scales. This pattern confirmed the Eltonian noise hypothesis wherein emphasis was on influences of macro-climate on local biotic interactions between trees and hosted ambrosia beetle communities, whereas local biotic relations, represented by host specificity dependence, were regionally conserved. Conclusions At a confined spatial scale, cross-taxa comparisons of co-occurrence highlighted the importance of the organism’s dispersal. The effects of tree abundance and phylogeny diversity on ambrosia beetle diversity were, to a large extent, indirect, operating via changes in ambrosia beetle abundance through spatial and temporal dynamics of resources distribution. Tree host dependence plays a minor role on the hosted ambrosia beetle community in this concealed wood decomposing interacting system.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4926
Author(s):  
Nguyen Duc Luong ◽  
Nguyen Hoang Hiep ◽  
Thi Hieu Bui

The increasing serious droughts recently might have significant impacts on socioeconomic development in the Red River basin (RRB). This study applied the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model to investigate spatio-temporal dynamics of soil moisture in the northeast, northwest, and Red River Delta (RRD) regions of the RRB part belongs to territory of Vietnam. The soil moisture dataset simulated for 10 years (2005–2014) was utilized to establish the soil moisture anomaly percentage index (SMAPI) for assessing intensity of agricultural drought. Soil moisture appeared to co-vary with precipitation, air temperature, evapotranspiration, and various features of land cover, topography, and soil type in three regions of the RRB. SMAPI analysis revealed that more areas in the northeast experienced severe droughts compared to those in other regions, especially in the dry season and transitional months. Meanwhile, the northwest mainly suffered from mild drought and a slightly wet condition during the dry season. Different from that, the RRD mainly had moderately to very wet conditions throughout the year. The areas of both agricultural and forested lands associated with severe drought in the dry season were larger than those in the wet season. Generally, VIC-based soil moisture approach offered a feasible solution for improving soil moisture and agricultural drought monitoring capabilities at the regional scale.


Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 753
Author(s):  
Guadalupe Sáez-Cano ◽  
Marcos Marvá ◽  
Paloma Ruiz-Benito ◽  
Miguel A. Zavala

The prediction of tree growth is key to further understand the carbon sink role of forests and the short-term forest capacity on climate change mitigation. In this work, we used large-scale data available from three consecutive forest inventories in a Euro-Mediterranean region and the Bertalanffy–Chapman–Richards equation to model up to a decade’s tree size variation in monospecific forests in the growing stages. We showed that a tree-level fitting with ordinary differential equations can be used to forecast tree diameter growth across time and space as function of environmental characteristics and initial size. This modelling approximation was applied at different aggregation levels to monospecific regions with forest inventories to predict trends in aboveground tree biomass stocks. Furthermore, we showed that this model accurately forecasts tree growth temporal dynamics as a function of size and environmental conditions. Further research to provide longer term prediction forest stock dynamics in a wide variety of forests should model regeneration and mortality processes and biotic interactions.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
María F. Checa ◽  
Elisa Levy ◽  
Jaqueline Rodriguez ◽  
Keith Willmott

AbstractWe analyzed the dynamics of multi-species butterfly communities along a climatic gradient with varying precipitation regimes for three consecutive years, and determine how climatic variables associate with observed butterfly seasonality. To provide a baseline for future studies of how climate change might affect these butterfly populations, we additionally explored the role of butterfly seasonality as a potential contributing factor for their susceptibility to climate variation. As far as we know, this represents the first study that simultaneously sampled and described seasonality patterns of tropical butterfly communities across ecosystems with varying climatic seasonality. A 3-year survey was carried out at three sites (i.e., wet, transition and dry forests) across a climatic gradient in western Ecuador. Butterflies were sampled using traps baited with rotting banana and prawn every two months from Nov 2010 to Sep 2013. Traps were set up at two heights, in the understory and canopy. In total, 7046 individuals of 212 species were sampled over 180 sampling days.Butterfly communities exhibited conspicuous intra and inter-annual variation in temporal dynamics with certain elements (e.g., maximum abundance recorded) of seasonality patterns likely synchronized in seasonal forests (i.e., transition and dry forest) across years but not in aseasonal forests (i.e., wet forest). In addition, the highest numbers of species and individuals occurred during the wet season across all study sites and years; indeed, rainfall was significantly positively associated with temporal abundance. Likewise, butterfly species displaying stronger seasonality were significantly associated with higher rainfall periods in seasonal forests. Variation in precipitation regimes might significantly affect more seasonal species.


2011 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alban Guillaumet ◽  
Roger Prodon

Abstract The mechanisms responsible for species replacement during ecological successions is a long-standing and open debate. In this study, we examined the distribution of the Sardinian warbler Sylvia melanocephala along two grassland-to-forest gradients, one in a high-diversity area (Albera-Aspres chain in Catalonia: eight Sylvia warbler species) and one in a low-diversity area (Mount Hymittos in Greece: four species). In Catalonia, distribution models suggested that the apparent exclusion of S. melanocephala from the open and forest ends of the gradient may be explained entirely by the preference of S. melanocephala for mid-successional shrublands. However, a joint analysis of both data sets revealed that: 1) S. melanocephala was more evenly distributed along the vegetation gradient in Greece, suggesting ecological release in the low-diversity area; and 2) a distribution model assuming interspecific competition (based on the distribution of Sylvia species showing a negative co-occurrence pattern with S. melanocephala) had a significantly higher predictive ability than a distribution model based on habitat variables alone. Our study supports the view that species turnover along ecological gradients generally results from a combination of intrinsic preferences and interspecific competition.


Forests ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Óscar Rodríguez de Rivera ◽  
Antonio López-Quílez ◽  
Marta Blangiardo

Climatic change is expected to affect forest development in the short term, as well as the spatial distribution of species in the long term. Species distribution models are potentially useful tools for guiding species choices in reforestation and forest management prescriptions to address climate change. The aim of this study is to build spatial and spatio-temporal models to predict the distribution of four different species present in the Spanish Forest Inventory. We have compared the different models and showed how accounting for dependencies in space and time affect the relationship between species and environmental variables.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo Bonifácio ◽  
Pedro Martínez Arbizu ◽  
Lénaïck Menot

Abstract. In the abyssal equatorial Pacific Ocean, most of the seafloor of the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCFZ), a 6 million km2 polymetallic nodule province, has been preempted for future mining. In light of the large environmental footprint that mining would leave and given the diversity and the vulnerability of the abyssal fauna, the International Seabed Authority has implemented a regional management plan that includes the creation of nine Areas of Particular Environmental Interest (APEIs) located at the periphery of the CCFZ. The scientific principles for the design of the APEIs were based on the best – albeit very limited – knowledge of the area. The fauna and habitats in the APEIs are unknown, as are species' ranges and the extent of biodiversity across the CCFZ. As part of the Joint Programming Initiative Healthy and Productive Seas and Oceans (JPI Oceans) pilot action “Ecological aspects of deep-sea mining”, the SO239 cruise provided data to improve species inventories, determine species ranges, identify the drivers of beta diversity patterns and assess the representativeness of an APEI. Four exploration contract areas and an APEI (APEI no. 3) were sampled along a gradient of sea surface primary productivity that spanned a distance of 1440 km in the eastern CCFZ. Between three and eight quantitative box cores (0.25 m2; 0–10 cm) were sampled in each study area, resulting in a large collection of polychaetes that were morphologically and molecularly (cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and 16S genes) analyzed. A total of 275 polychaete morphospecies were identified. Only one morphospecies was shared among all five study areas and 49 % were singletons. The patterns in community structure and composition were mainly attributed to variations in organic carbon fluxes to the seafloor at the regional scale and nodule density at the local scale, thus supporting the main assumptions underlying the design of the APEIs. However, the APEI no. 3, which is located in an oligotrophic province and separated from the CCFZ by the Clarion Fracture Zone, showed the lowest densities, lowest diversity, and a very low and distant independent similarity in community composition compared to the contract areas, thus questioning the representativeness and the appropriateness of APEI no. 3 to meet its purpose of diversity preservation. Among the four exploration contracts, which belong to a mesotrophic province, the distance decay of similarity provided a species turnover of 0.04 species km−1, an average species range of 25 km and an extrapolated richness of up to 240 000 polychaete species in the CCFZ. By contrast, nonparametric estimators of diversity predict a regional richness of up to 498 species. Both estimates are biased by the high frequency of singletons in the dataset, which likely result from under-sampling and merely reflect our level of uncertainty. The assessment of potential risks and scales of biodiversity loss due to nodule mining thus requires an appropriate inventory of species richness in the CCFZ.


Insects ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Ranger ◽  
Christopher T. Werle ◽  
Peter B. Schultz ◽  
Karla M. Addesso ◽  
Jason B. Oliver ◽  
...  

Ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) are destructive wood-boring insects of horticultural trees. We evaluated long-lasting insecticide netting for protecting stems against ambrosia beetles. Container-grown eastern redbud, Cercis canadensis, trees were flood-stressed to induce ambrosia beetle attacks, and deltamethrin-treated netting was wrapped from the base of the stem vertically to the branch junction. Trees were deployed under field conditions in Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, and Mississippi with the following treatments: (1) flooded tree; (2) flooded tree with untreated netting; (3) flooded tree with treated ‘standard mesh’ netting of 24 holes/cm2; (4) flooded tree with treated ‘fine mesh’ netting of 28 holes/cm2; and/or (5) non-flooded tree. Treated netting reduced attacks compared to untreated netting and/or unprotected trees in Mississippi in 2017, Ohio and Tennessee in 2018, and Virginia in 2017–2018. Inconsistent effects occurred in Mississippi in 2018. Fewer Anisandrus maiche, Xylosandrus germanus, and Xyleborinus saxesenii were dissected from trees deployed in Ohio protected with treated netting compared to untreated netting; trees deployed in other locations were not dissected. These results indicate long-lasting insecticide netting can provide some protection of trees from ambrosia beetle attacks.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 1092-1102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoni Gavish ◽  
Charles J. Marsh ◽  
Mathias Kuemmerlen ◽  
Stefan Stoll ◽  
Peter Haase ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas J Lembrechts ◽  
L Broeders ◽  
J De Gruyter ◽  
D Radujković ◽  
I Ramirez-Rojas ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Creating accurate habitat suitability and distribution models (HSDMs) for soil microbiota is far more challenging than for aboveground organism groups. In this perspective paper, we propose a conceptual framework that addresses several of the critical issues holding back further applications. Most importantly, we tackle the mismatch between the broadscale, long-term averages of environmental variables traditionally used, and the environment as experienced by soil microbiota themselves. We suggest using nested sampling designs across environmental gradients and objectively integrating spatially hierarchic heterogeneity as covariates in HSDMs. Second, to incorporate the crucial role of taxa co-occurrence as driver of soil microbial distributions, we promote the use of joint species distribution models, a class of models that jointly analyze multiple species’ distributions, quantifying both species-specific environmental responses (i.e. the environmental niche) and covariance among species (i.e. biotic interactions). Our approach allows incorporating the environmental niche and its associated distribution across multiple spatial scales. The proposed framework facilitates the inclusion of the true relationships between soil organisms and their abiotic and biotic environments in distribution models, which is crucial to improve predictions of soil microbial redistributions as a result of global change.


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