Can dragonfly and damselfly communities be used as bioindicators of land use intensification?

Abstract

Abstract There is a growing need to identify efficient biological indicators for assessing accelerated land use intensification, as well for understanding the effects of past environmental changes on species distributions. To address this, we used an extensive opportunistic survey dataset of 254 adult odonate (suborder Anisoptera or dragonflies; suborder Zygoptera or damselflies) species collected in nine Mexican hydrological regions during two time windows (1980–1993 and 1994–2010). We evaluated species richness, body size and individual species’ response to land use intensification over time at a national scale using Phylogenetic Bayesian Regression Mixed Models. We found that dragonfly species serve as good indicators of current land use, whereas damselfly species show time-lagged effects of land use intensification. Large species could thus be used as a proxy of recent reduction of original vegetation, whereas small species provide information on historic habitat modification. Odonate body size seems to be a better variable for measuring the integrity of original vegetation than the more commonly used species richness. Finally, the use of individual species as bioindicators at broad spatial and temporal scales is not encouraged, as it does not reflect the degree of ecological integrity, and only the occurrence of some species combinations can indicate environmental degradation.