Abstract
Introduction
Common species can predict overall species richness and composition, serving as a shortcut to biodiversity and supporting well-informed management of areas. However, the impacts of temporal variation in underlying species occurrence and imperfect detection on surrogacy effectiveness are unknown. We hypothesized that common species will represent total species composition both across sites and along environmental gradients and that this surrogacy effectiveness is maintained over time and robust to imperfect detection.
Materials and methods
We sampled ground-dwelling ants using pitfall traps over 25 km2 on Amazon. We measured the congruence between a complete dataset and subsets containing a smaller number of species based on their commonness and compared the results among three sampling years. Further, we simulated virtual assemblages to determine the effect of species detection probability on surrogacy effectiveness and compared the costs associated with using all species vs. common species only. The common species composition responded to environmental gradients similarly to the overall species composition, regardless of year. The simulated data showed similar trends, although including imperfect detection increased the minimum number of common species required to recover overall patterns reasonably.
Conclusion - Implications for insect conservation
This study represents the first report on the effectiveness of common species in predicting ant assemblage patterns over time. We propose that imperfect detection should be considered in biodiversity surrogacy studies, especially regarding its impact on surrogate effectiveness over time.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. For more details and metadata, please visit PPBio website https://ppbio.inpa.gov.br/manuais
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Acknowledgements
We thank Juliana Araújo, Pollyana Cavalcante, Adriano Oliveira, and all field guides for their help in sampling ants. Fernando Fernández, Jacques Delabie, John Longino, José Vilhena, Itanna Fernandes and Rodrigo Feitosa confirmed some species identifications for this study.
Funding
Financial support was provided by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisas do Estado do Amazonas (FAPEAM) PIPT/1750/08; FIXAM/AM 062.01325/2014 and Universal Amazonas 62.00674/2015; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) PNPD/03017/19-05; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) by PRONEX 16/2006, the Programa de Pesquisa em Biodiversidade—PPBio 558318/2009-6, 457545/2012-7; the Programa de Pesquisas Ecológicas de Longa Duração—PELD 403764/2012-2 and the Centro de Estudos Integrados da Biodiversidade Amazônica (CENBAM). ACSU was supported by a CAPES master PhD scholarship and JLPS was supported by CNPq PCI/INMA post-doctoral scholarship (Grant No. 300886/2022-5).
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All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Material preparation, data collection was performed by Jorge Luiz Pereira Souza and analysis were performed by Ana Cristina da Silva Utta, Jorge Luiz Pereira Souza, and Pedro Aurélio Costa Lima Pequeno. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ana Cristina da Silva Utta, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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da Silva Utta, A.C., Pequeno, P.A.C.L., Magnusson, W.E. et al. Robustness of biodiversity surrogates to temporal variation and imperfect detection. J Insect Conserv (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-024-00563-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-024-00563-6