Abstract
Elevational diversity patterns can reflect the responses of biodiversity to climate change spatially. We investigate the species diversity patterns of green lacewings (an important predatory group of insects) along the gradient of elevation from the Shaluli Mountains (Mts. Shaluli), which belong to the Hengduan Mountains in southwestern China, one of the important hotspots of global biodiversity. We combined multiple approaches, including Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD), Assemble Species by Automatic Partitioning analysis (ASAP), General Mixed Yule Coalescent (GMYC), Poisson tree processes (bPTP), multi-rate Poisson tree processes (mPTP), to delimit the green lacewings species based on the standard barcoding region of cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI). The α-diversity and β-diversity patterns of green lacewings from the Mts. Shaluli along the gradient of elevation were analyzed, with further exploration on how the temperature effect elevational-diversity pattern on broad-scale (county scale) elevational gradients. The DNA barcoding reference library consisted of 40 green lacewing species from the Mts. Shaluli. The α-diversity of green lacewings decreased with the increasing elevation. The temperature was found to have a significant effect on the abundance and Shannon-Wiener diversity index but not on the species richness. Nestedness replaced turnover as the main component of Sørensen’s dissimilarity with the increasing elevation, and greater nestedness occurred at low temperature areas. The combination of a reliable DNA barcoding database could improve the accuracy and efficiency to investigate the species diversity patterns of green lacewings. Temperature, resource, and resultant interspecific competitions may have important roles in explaining the species diversity patterns of green lacewings from the Mts. Shaluli. Priority of conservation should be given to the species at low elevation, middle elevation, and relatively high temperature regions under the background of global climate warming.
Highlights
IntroductionElucidating the factors that drive global biodiversity is the fundamental goal in ecology and conservation (McCain, 2007) considering the complexity of biotic (i.e., interspecific interactions, food availability, and thermal tolerance) and abiotic (i.e., temperature, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, and wind velocity) factors in nature’s ecosystem (Sundqvist et al, 2013)
Elucidating the factors that drive global biodiversity is the fundamental goal in ecology and conservation (McCain, 2007) considering the complexity of biotic and abiotic factors in nature’s ecosystem (Sundqvist et al, 2013)
The green lacewings represent one of the most diverse lineages of Neuroptera. They are commonly found in various ecosystems, such as forests, orchards, and croplands, the identifications of many green lacewing species, even of some frequently used natural enemy species, are difficult to practice solely based on the morphological characters because their interspecific differences are indistinct (Pappas et al, 2011; Lai and Liu, 2020)
Summary
Elucidating the factors that drive global biodiversity is the fundamental goal in ecology and conservation (McCain, 2007) considering the complexity of biotic (i.e., interspecific interactions, food availability, and thermal tolerance) and abiotic (i.e., temperature, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, and wind velocity) factors in nature’s ecosystem (Sundqvist et al, 2013). The community composition variation (β-diversity) has been interpreted as the following two different features. Only turnover is present in all the elevational gradients (Paknia and Sh, 2015; Young et al, 2019). Combining both the α-diversity and β-diversity gives a more comprehensive understanding of the biotic heterogeneity of a certain area (Wang et al, 2000; Baselga, 2010)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
