Taxonomic and Functional Ant Diversity Along tropical, Subtropical, and Subalpine Elevational Transects in Southwest China

Abstract

Although elevational gradients of biodiversity have long been the topic of scientific research, information on patterns of, and processes that shape insect community structure across elevation is still lacking. Addressing this gap requires the use of both taxonomic and functional approaches when studying diversity across elevational gradients. In this study, we examined taxonomic and functional alpha and beta diversity of ant assemblages sampled along tropical, subtropical, and subalpine elevational transects in Yunnan Province, southwest China. Species richness was used to quantify taxonomic alpha diversity, and two indices (FD and FRic) were calculated using morphological measurements to quantify functional alpha diversity. Taxonomic and functional beta diversity were partitioned into their turnover- and nestedness-resultant components. Though temperature and functional alpha diversity decreased linearly with increasing elevation, taxonomic alpha diversity showed a significant logarithmic decrease, with few species present at elevations greater than 3000 m a.s.l. The turnover-resultant component of taxonomic beta diversity increased with increasing elevational distance, while the nestedness-resultant component of functional beta diversity increased with increasing elevational distance in the subtropical transect. The observed patterns of taxonomic and functional diversity reflected ants’ thermophilic nature, implying functional adaptations (i.e., nested functional diversity) at higher elevations where environmental conditions were unfavorable.

Elevational Patterns of Generic Diversity in the Tenebrionid Beetles (Coleoptera Tenebrionidae) of Latium (Central Italy)

“…To model elevational patterns for number of genera, number of species, and GD, we tested various functions (linear, semilogarithmic, power, polynomial, and exponential) [12,64] and selected the best fit model according to the goodness-of-fit (R 2 ) and Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Curvilinear models were linearized by using log 10 -transformations.…”

Patterns and drivers of leaf‐litter ant diversity along a tropical elevational gradient in Mexico

“…Liu et al, 2018), although an increase in β-diversity with increasing elevations has also been reported (e.g. Fontana et al, 2020;Fontanilla et al, 2019). This variety of elevational ant diversity patterns highlights the importance of more comprehensive studies across replicated gradients to identify the general patterns of ant distribution in mountains and to untangle different potential drivers (Szewczyk & McCain, 2016).…”

Mamíferos medianos y grandes de la Sierra Madre del Sur de Guerrero, México: evaluación integral de la diversidad y su relación con las características ambientales

“…Los valores positivos de SES FRic indican que la diversidad funcional es alta (sobredispersión funcional), mientras que los valores negativos representan una diversidad funcional baja (agrupamiento funcional; Swenson, 2014). Suponiendo una distribución normal para considerar un nivel de confianza de 95%, los valores de SES deben estar entre -1.96 y 1.96, por lo que los valores observados fuera de este intervalo se consideran estadísticamente distintos a lo esperado por azar (Fontanilla et al, 2019;Liu y Wang, 2018). El análisis se realizó con los paquetes FD y Picante en el programa R 3.5.1 (Kembel et al, 2019;Laliberté et al, 2010;R Development Core Team, 2018).…”