Plant diversity accurately predicts insect diversity in two tropical landscapes

Zhang, Kai, Lin, Siliang, Ji, Yinqiu, Yang, Chenxue, Wang, Xiaoyang, Yang, Chunyan, Wang, Hesheng, Jiang, Haisheng, Harrison, Rhett D. and Yu, Douglas W. (2016) Plant diversity accurately predicts insect diversity in two tropical landscapes. Molecular Ecology, 25 (17). 4407–4419. ISSN 0962-1083

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Abstract

Plant diversity surely determines arthropod diversity, but only moderate correlations between arthropod and plant species richness had been observed until Basset et al. (Science, 338, 2012 and 1481) finally undertook an unprecedentedly comprehensive sampling of a tropical forest and demonstrated that plant species richness could indeed accurately predict arthropod species richness. We now require a high-through- put pipeline to operationalize this result so that we can (i) test competing explanations for tropical arthropod megadiversity, (ii) improve estimates of global eukaryotic spe- cies diversity, and (iii) use plant and arthropod communities as efficient proxies for each other, thus improving the efficiency of conservation planning and of detecting forest degradation and recovery. We therefore applied metabarcoding to Malaise-trap samples across two tropical landscapes in China. We demonstrate that plant species richness can accurately predict arthropod (mostly insect) species richness and that plant and insect community compositions are highly correlated, even in landscapes that are large, heterogeneous and anthropogenically modified. Finally, we review how metabarcoding makes feasible highly replicated tests of the major competing explana- tions for tropical megadiversity.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	arthropoda,biodiversity,biomonitoring,host specificity,insect–plant interactions,surrogate species
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment
Related URLs:	http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/mec.13770
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	24 Sep 2016 00:54
Last Modified:	11 May 2023 19:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/60265
DOI:	10.1111/mec.13770

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