Dataset Information

Landscape-scale terrestrial factors are also vital in shaping Odonata assemblages of watercourses.

ABSTRACT: Habitat loss and fragmentation causes a decline in insect populations. Odonata (both dragonflies and damselflies) are especially threatened by the destruction of both aquatic and terrestrial environment. Moreover, effects of large-scale habitat heterogeneity on Odonata assemblages are poorly studied. In a two years study along East-European lowland watercourses both aquatic and terrestrial environment were studied to reveal the importance of local (e.g. water depth, macrovegetation cover, etc.) and landscape-scale (e.g. farmland patch size, forest patch proportion, etc.) variables to Odonata (as well as to dragonflies and damselflies separately) through increasing spatial sampling scales. The specimens were sampled using 500?m long transects from May to September. Results, both on local and landscape scales emphasized the importance of terrestrial environment on Odonata. Local variables influence damselflies, while dragonflies are more sensitive to landscape variables. Damselfly's diversity decreased with increasing macrovegetation cover, while dragonfly's diversity decreased with the increasing degree of land use intensification, but increased with the length of watercourses. It is thus vital to stress the importance of partial watercourse clearing, and moderate maintenance of traditional farm management based on small parcel farming near watercourses to maintain diverse and healthy Odonata assemblages.

SUBMITTER: Nagy HB

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6890666 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Landscape-scale terrestrial factors are also vital in shaping Odonata assemblages of watercourses.

Nagy H Beáta HB László Zoltán Z Szabó Flóra F Szőcs Lilla L Dévai György G Tóthmérész Béla B

Scientific reports 20191203 1

Habitat loss and fragmentation causes a decline in insect populations. Odonata (both dragonflies and damselflies) are especially threatened by the destruction of both aquatic and terrestrial environment. Moreover, effects of large-scale habitat heterogeneity on Odonata assemblages are poorly studied. In a two years study along East-European lowland watercourses both aquatic and terrestrial environment were studied to reveal the importance of local (e.g. water depth, macrovegetation cover, etc.) ...[more]

PMID: 31796792

Similar Datasets

Project description:Species assemblages are the results of various processes, including dispersion and habitat filtering. Disentangling the effects of these different processes is challenging for statistical analysis, especially when biotic interactions should be considered. In this study, we used plants (producers) and leafhoppers (phytophagous) as model organisms, and we investigated the relative importance of abiotic versus biotic factors that shape community assemblages, and we infer on their biotic interactions by applying three-step statistical analysis. We applied a novel statistical analysis, that is, multiblock Redundancy Analysis (mbRA, step 1) and showed that 51.8% and 54.1% of the overall variation in plant and leafhopper assemblages are, respectively, explained by the two multiblock models. The most important blocks of variables to explain the variations in plant and leafhopper assemblages were local topography and biotic factors. Variation partitioning analysis (step 2) showed that pure abiotic filtering and pure biotic processes were relatively less important than their combinations, suggesting that biotic relationships are strongly structured by abiotic conditions. Pairwise co-occurrence analysis (step 3) on generalist leafhoppers and the most common plants identified 40 segregated species pairs (mainly between plant species) and 16 aggregated pairs (mainly between leafhopper species). Pairwise analysis on specialist leafhoppers and potential host plants clearly revealed aggregated patterns. Plant segregation suggests heterogeneous resource availability and competitive interactions, while leafhopper aggregation suggests host feeding differentiation at the local level, different feeding microhabitats on host plants, and similar environmental requirements of the species. Using the novel mbRA, we disentangle for the first time the relative importance of more than five distinct groups of variables shaping local species communities. We highlighted the important role of abiotic processes mediated by bottom-up effects of plants on leafhopper communities. Our results revealed that in-field structure diversification and trophic interactions are the main factors causing the co-occurrence patterns observed.

Project description:Previous macrophysiological studies suggested that temperature-driven color lightness and body size variations strongly influence biogeographical patterns in ectotherms. However, these trait-environment relationships scale to local assemblages and the extent to which they can be modified by dispersal remains largely unexplored. We test whether the predictions of the thermal melanism hypothesis and the Bergmann's rule hold for local assemblages. We also assess whether these trait-environment relationships are more important for species adapted to less stable (lentic) habitats, due to their greater dispersal propensity compared to those adapted to stable (lotic) habitats.We quantified the color lightness and body volume of 99 European dragon- and damselflies (Odonata) and combined these trait information with survey data for 518 local assemblages across Europe. Based on this continent-wide yet spatially explicit dataset, we tested for effects temperature and precipitation on the color lightness and body volume of local assemblages and assessed differences in their relative importance and strength between lentic and lotic assemblages, while accounting for spatial and phylogenetic autocorrelation.The color lightness of assemblages of odonates increased, and body size decreased with increasing temperature. Trait-environment relationships in the average and phylogenetic predicted component were equally important for assemblages of both habitat types but were stronger in lentic assemblages when accounting for phylogenetic autocorrelation.Our results show that the mechanism underlying color lightness and body size variations scale to local assemblages, indicating their general importance. These mechanisms were of equal evolutionary significance for lentic and lotic species, but higher dispersal ability seems to enable lentic species to cope better with historical climatic changes. The documented differences between lentic and lotic assemblages also highlight the importance of integrating interactions of thermal adaptations with proxies of the dispersal ability of species into trait-based models, for improving our understanding of climate-driven biological responses.

Dataset Information

Landscape-scale terrestrial factors are also vital in shaping Odonata assemblages of watercourses.

Publications

Landscape-scale terrestrial factors are also vital in shaping Odonata assemblages of watercourses.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets