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Insect communities in saline waters consist of realized but not fundamental niche specialists.

ABSTRACT: Considering how organisms adapt to stress is essential if we are to anticipate biological responses to global change in ecosystems. Communities in stressful environments can potentially be assembled by specialists (i.e. species that only occur in a limited range of environmental conditions) and/or generalist species with wider environmental tolerances. We review the existing literature on the salinity tolerance of aquatic insects previously identified as saline specialists because they were exclusively found in saline habitats, and explore if these saline realized niche specialists are also specialists in their fundamental niches or on the contrary are fundamental niche generalist species confined to the highest salinities they can tolerate. The results suggest that species inhabiting saline waters are generalists in their fundamental niches, with a predominant pattern of high survival in freshwater-low salinity conditions, where their fitness tends to be similar or even higher than in saline waters. Additionally, their performance in freshwater tends to be similar to related strictly freshwater species, so no apparent trade-off of generalization is shown. These results are discussed in the framework of the ecological and evolutionary processes driving community assembly across the osmotic stress gradient, and their potential implications for predicting impacts from saline dilution and freshwater salinization.This article is part of the theme issue 'Salt in freshwaters: causes, ecological consequences and future prospects'.

SUBMITTER: Arribas P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6283954 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Insect communities in saline waters consist of realized but not fundamental niche specialists.

Arribas Paula P Gutiérrez-Cánovas Cayetano C Botella-Cruz María M Botella-Cruz María M Cañedo-Argüelles Miguel M Antonio Carbonell José J Millán Andrés A Pallarés Susana S Velasco Josefa J Sánchez-Fernández David D

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 20181203 1764

Considering how organisms adapt to stress is essential if we are to anticipate biological responses to global change in ecosystems. Communities in stressful environments can potentially be assembled by specialists (i.e. species that only occur in a limited range of environmental conditions) and/or generalist species with wider environmental tolerances. We review the existing literature on the salinity tolerance of aquatic insects previously identified as saline specialists because they were excl ...[more]

PMID: 30509910

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Project description:The difficulties specialized phytophagous insects face in finding habitats with an appropriate host should constrain their dispersal. Within the concept of metacommunities, this leads to the prediction that host-plant specialists should sort into local assemblages according to the local environmental conditions, i.e. habitat conditions, whereas assemblages of host-plant generalists should depend also on regional processes. Our study aimed at ranking the importance of local environmental factors and species composition of the vegetation for predicting the species composition of phytophagous moth assemblages with either a narrow or a broad host range. Our database consists of 351,506 specimens representing 820 species of nocturnal Macrolepidoptera sampled between 1980 and 2006 using light traps in 96 strict forest reserves in southern Germany. Species were grouped as specialists or generalists according to the food plants of the larvae; specialists use host plants belonging to one genus. We used predictive canonical correspondence and co-correspondence analyses to rank the importance of local environmental factors, the species composition of the vegetation and the role of host plants for predicting the species composition of host-plant specialists and generalists. The cross-validatory fit for predicting the species composition of phytophagous moths was higher for host-plant specialists than for host-plant generalists using environmental factors as well as the composition of the vegetation. As expected for host-plant specialists, the species composition of the vegetation was a better predictor of the composition of these assemblages than the environmental variables. But surprisingly, this difference for specialized insects was not due to the occurrence of their host plants. Overall, our study supports the idea that owing to evolutionary constraints in finding a host, host-plant specialists and host-plant generalists follow two different models of metacommunities: the species-sorting and the mass-effect model.

Dataset Information

Insect communities in saline waters consist of realized but not fundamental niche specialists.

Publications

Insect communities in saline waters consist of realized but not fundamental niche specialists.

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