Effects of habitat fragmentation on the functional diversity of insects in Thousand Island Lake, China

Abstract

AbstractDue to habitat fragmentation, the loss of species diversity has been extensively studied. On the contrary, the effects of habitat fragmentation on functional diversity is still poorly understood. In the Thousand Island Lake, we conducted studies of insect functional diversity on a set of 29 isolated islands. We used 10 functional diversity indices from three aspects (functional richness, functional evenness and functional divergence) to respectively describe functional diversity of insects on sample islands.We found the following results: (i) The functional indices selected could reflect the functional diversity of sample islands and it is further proved that in general, three components of functional diversity were independent of each other; (ii) Sample islands could be divided into two categories, island JSD and the remaining islands; (iii) Functional richness increased with island area and shape index, but had no significant correlation with isolation. Likewise, both functional evenness and functional divergence had no significant correlation with island attributes. The conclusion to emphasize from our research is that: (i) habitat fragmentation reduced the biological functional diversity to some extent, further demonstrating the importance of habitat continuity in biodiversity protection; and (ii) for functional diversity protection of insects in a fragmented landscape, an island which has high approximate shape index values of at least hundred hectare magnitude order has a critical promoting effect.