Annotated list of Tettigoniidae (Orthoptera) from the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania and new Tettigoniidae species from East Africa

Heller²,

Warchałowska‐Śliwa

et al. 2014

Org Divers Evol

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Section: Cytotaxonomysupporting

confidence: 60%

Section: Bioacousticsmentioning

confidence: 64%

Ecology, acoustics and chromosomes of the East African genus Afroanthracites Hemp & Ingrisch (Orthoptera, Tettigoniidae, Conocephalinae, Agraeciini) with the description of new species

Heller²,

Warchałowska‐Śliwa

et al. 2014

Org Divers Evol

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“…This hypothesis is supported by a recent study on the internal and external morphology of Afroanthracites Hemp & Ingrisch, 2013 species: A. montium (Sjöstedt, 1909) from Kilimanjaro and A. usambaricus (Sjöstedt, 1909) from the West Usambara Mountains were morphologically very closely related. Afroanthracites species from adjacent mountain ranges, such as the East Usambaras showed clear differences in the morphology of the internal and external genitalic structures (Hemp, ). Thus the same pattern in forest‐bound Afroanthracites was found as in P. lindneri and P. jagoi .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climatic fluctuations and orogenesis as motors for speciation in East Africa: case study on ParepistaurusKarsch, 1896 (Orthoptera)

Kehl

Schultz

et al. 2014

Systematic Entomology

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Mechanisms of speciation of flightless grasshoppers in mountainous and coastal East Africa are inferred considering (i) phylogenies estimated with a combination of molecular markers (16S rRNA locus, COI and H3), (ii) ecological data and (iii) the geographic distribution of Parepistaurus species. The study suggests that coastal taxa of Parepistaurus belong to ancestral lineages from which evolved the high diversity of species found in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania and Kenya, which are geologically ancient mountain formations. Network analyses and a molecular clock approach, calibrated with the geological age of the volcanoes, suggested that speciation was boosted by climatic fluctuations affecting large areas of East Africa. With the aridification beginning 2.8 Ma, forest taxa were isolated due to forest fragmentation and populations were separated by extended grasslands, which are avoided by Parepistaurus species. However, a humid period between 2.7 and 2.5 Ma triggered a spread of coastal taxa along the Eastern Arc Mountains. Forests expanded again and riparian vegetation along rivers draining into the Indian Ocean probably served as corridors for the dispersal of coastal taxa to the hinterland. The inland volcanoes such as Mount Kilimanjaro are therefore good time markers because their geological age is known, limiting the available time for speciation processes of mountainous Parepistaurus in the area to a maximum of about 1-2 Ma. A third humid but cold period between 1.1 and 0.9 Ma probably further boosted the spread of several flightless and montane-adapted Orthoptera taxa.

“…Light shading: single, dark shading: main elevational occurrence. For details, see Hemp (2009Hemp ( , 2013 (Soini, 2005). Although the Chagga homegardens did not expand downslope in this area, settlements today cover 24 times the area they did in 1961.…”

Section: Orthoptera As Bioindicatorsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain of Africa, acts as a water tower feeding major river systems playing a dominant role in regional climate regulation and providing many other important ecosystem services to local human communities (Agrawala et al, 2003;Hemp, 2005). It has a huge range of different natural vegetation types ranging from savanna to cloud forests and alpine vegetation, harboring about 3,000 species of vascular plants (Hemp, 2006a), and many animal species (e.g., over 200 Orthoptera species (Hemp, 2009(Hemp, , 2013. However, during the last decades, changes in regional climate (in particular decreasing trends in precipitation, (Hemp, 2005;Otte et al, 2017) indicated by the melting glaciers and land-cover changes due to a strongly increasing human population have altered and endangered the natural vegetation and biodiversity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Broken bridges: The isolation of Kilimanjaro's ecosystem

2018

Global Change Biology

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Biodiversity studies of global change mainly focus on direct impacts such as losses in species numbers or ecosystem functions. In this study, we focus on the long-term effects of recent land-cover conversion and subsequent ecological isolation of Kilimanjaro on biodiversity in a paleobiogeographical context, linking our findings with the long-standing question whether colonization of African mountains mainly depended on long-distance dispersal, or whether gradual migration has been possible through habitat bridges under colder climates. For this, we used Orthoptera as bioindicators, whose patterns of endemism and habitat demands we studied on about 500 vegetation plots on Kilimanjaro and Mt. Meru (Tanzania) since 1996. Land-cover changes in the same area were revealed using a supervised classification of Landsat images from 1976 to 2000. In 1976, there was a corridor of submontane forest vegetation linking Kilimanjaro with Mt. Meru, replaced by human settlements and agriculture after 2000. Until recently, this submontane forest bridge facilitated the dispersal of forest animals, illustrated by the large number of endemic submontane forest Orthoptera shared by both mountains. Furthermore, the occurrence of common montane endemics suggests the existence of a former forest corridor with montane vegetation during much earlier times under climatic conditions 2-7°C cooler and 400-1,700 mm wetter than today. Based on the endemicity patterns of forest Orthoptera, negative consequences are predicted due to the effects of isolation, in particular for larger forest animals. Kilimanjaro is becoming an increasingly isolated ecosystem with far reaching consequences for diversity and endemism. Forest bridges between East African mountains acted as important migratory corridors and are not only a prehistoric phenomenon during periods with other climatic conditions but also disappeared in some places recently due to increasing and direct anthropogenic impact.