Abstract
Studies of species diversity patterns across regional environmental gradients seldom consider the impact of habitat type on within-site (alpha) and between-site (beta) diversity. This study is designed to identify the influence of habitat type across geographic and environmental space, on local patterns of species richness and regional turnover patterns of ant diversity in the northeastern United States. Specifically, I aim to 1) compare local species richness in paired open and forested transects and identify the environmental variables that best correlate with richness; and 2) document patterns of beta diversity throughout the region in both open and forested habitat. I systematically sampled ants at 67 sites from May to August 2010, spanning 10 degrees of latitude, and 1000 meters of elevation. Patterns of alpha and beta diversity across the region and along environmental gradients differed between forested and open habitats. Local species richness was higher in the low elevation and warmest sites and was always higher in open habitat than in forest habitat transects. Richness decreased as temperature decreased or elevation increased. Forested transects show strong patterns of decreasing dissimilarity in species composition between sites along the temperature gradient but open habitat transects did not. Maximum temperature of the warmest month better predicted species richness than either latitude or elevation. I find that using environmental variables as key predictors of richness yields more biologically relevant results, and produces simpler macroecological models than commonly used models which use only latitude and elevation as predictors of richness and diversity patterns. This study contributes to the understanding of mechanisms that structure the communities of important terrestrial arthropods which are likely to be influenced by climatic change.
Highlights
Biodiversity monitoring studies along environmental gradients can be used as natural experiments to document how species richness and community structure change in response to biotic and abiotic factors, including those predicted to be affected by climatic change [1,2]
The results presented here demonstrate that alpha and beta diversity of ground-foraging ants in the northeastern United States differ based on habitat type across environmental gradients
Latitudinal gradients of ant species richness previously have been considered for the ants of the northeastern United States [5,6,34], where species richness in temperate forests were best predicted by key climatic and local environmental attributes
Summary
Biodiversity monitoring studies along environmental gradients can be used as natural experiments to document how species richness and community structure change in response to biotic and abiotic factors, including those predicted to be affected by climatic change [1,2]. At regional spatial scales (i.e. scales within the same biome, domain or landscape [4]), species richness is often correlated with temperature, water availability, and productivity [5,6,7], which vary with latitude. These correlations may differ among continents, perhaps reflecting differences in evolutionary history [8]. At local spatial scales (i.e. scales within the same community [4]), habitat type may be a better predictor of species richness than geographic location along an environmental gradient [7]. This work contributes to the growing number of studies relating species richness to various environmental gradients thorough different global biomes (e.g. [7]) and so can be useful in identifying global patterns of species richness
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