Dataset Information

Pervasive impact of large-scale edge effects on a beetle community.

ABSTRACT: Habitat edges are a ubiquitous feature of modern fragmented landscapes, but a tendency for researchers to restrict sampling designs to relatively small spatial scales means that edge effects are known to influence faunal communities over small spatial scales of only 20-250 m. However, we found striking changes in the abundance and community composition of 769 New Zealand beetle species ( approximately 26,000 individuals) across very long edge gradients. We show that almost 90% of species respond significantly to habitat edges and that the abundances of 20% of common species were affected by edges at scales >250 m. Moreover, as many as one in eight common species had edge effects that appeared to penetrate as far as 1 km into habitat patches. Even 1 km inside forest, beetle communities differed in species richness, beta-diversity (spatial turnover), and composition from the deep forest interior. Spatially explicit models of fragmented landscapes have shown that such large-scale edge effects can lead to an 80% reduction in the population size of interior forest species in even very large fragments. Moreover, such large-scale edge effects can drive species that inhabit central habitat core-which are among the most threatened species in fragmented landscapes-to local extinction from habitat fragments and protected areas. In a global analysis of protected areas, we show that kilometer-scale edge effects may compromise the ability of more than three-quarters of the world's forested reserves to conserve the community biostructures that are unique to forest interiors.

SUBMITTER: Ewers RM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2291112 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Pervasive impact of large-scale edge effects on a beetle community.

Ewers Robert M RM Didham Raphael K RK

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20080328 14

Habitat edges are a ubiquitous feature of modern fragmented landscapes, but a tendency for researchers to restrict sampling designs to relatively small spatial scales means that edge effects are known to influence faunal communities over small spatial scales of only 20-250 m. However, we found striking changes in the abundance and community composition of 769 New Zealand beetle species ( approximately 26,000 individuals) across very long edge gradients. We show that almost 90% of species respond ...[more]

PMID: 18375751

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Project description:We examined tree-soil habitat associations in lowland forest communities at Paracou, French Guiana. We analyzed a large dataset assembling six permanent plots totaling 37.5 ha, in which extensive LIDAR-derived topographical data and soil chemical and physical data have been integrated with precise botanical determinations. Map of relative elevation from the nearest stream summarized both soil fertility and hydromorphic characteristics, with seasonally inundated bottomlands having higher soil phosphate content and base saturation, and plateaus having higher soil carbon, nitrogen and aluminum contents. We employed a statistical test of correlations between tree species density and environmental maps, by generating Monte Carlo simulations of random raster images that preserve autocorrelation of the original maps. Nearly three fourths of the 94 taxa with at least one stem per ha showed a significant correlation between tree density and relative elevation, revealing contrasted species-habitat associations in term of abundance, with seasonally inundated bottomlands (24.5% of species) and well-drained plateaus (48.9% of species). We also observed species preferences for environments with or without steep slopes (13.8% and 10.6%, respectively). We observed that closely-related species were frequently associated with different soil habitats in this region (70% of the 14 genera with congeneric species that have a significant association test) suggesting species-habitat associations have arisen multiple times in this tree community. We also tested if species with similar habitat preferences shared functional strategies. We found that seasonally inundated forest specialists tended to have smaller stature (maximum diameter) than species found on plateaus. Our results underline the importance of tree-soil habitat associations in structuring diverse communities at fine spatial scales and suggest that additional studies are needed to disentangle community assembly mechanisms related to dispersal limitation, biotic interactions and environmental filtering from species-habitat associations. Moreover, they provide a framework to generalize across tropical forest sites.

Dataset Information

Pervasive impact of large-scale edge effects on a beetle community.

Publications

Pervasive impact of large-scale edge effects on a beetle community.

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