Abstract
Abstract A dramatic insect decline has been documented on the grasslands and forests of European or North American mainland. Yet, other parts of the world and other ecosystems remain much less studied with unknown patterns. Using a unique time‐series dataset, we investigate recent trends on abundance and richness of arthropods sampled in Azorean native forest over 6 years (2013–2018). We test the hypothesis that biodiversity erosion drivers are changing the diversity and relative species abundance structure (species abundance distribution, SAD) of endemics, native non‐endemics and exotic species over time. We also examine temporal trends in abundance for each individual species. In contrast with mainland studies, we observed no decline in overall arthropod diversity, but a clear increase in the diversity of exotic arthropods and some evidence of a tendency for decreasing abundance for some endemic species. We also document stronger species turnover for exotic species, but no specific changes in the SAD. We argue that many changes, particularly in unique systems such as islands, will be noticed not at the richness but mostly at compositional level. Special attention should be given to exotic species which are known to be one of the major drivers of biodiversity erosion on islands.
Highlights
Biodiversity loss is well recognised as a key challenge for this century (Sala et al, 2000; Cardinale et al, 2012)
Using a unique time-series dataset, we investigate recent trends on abundance and richness of arthropods sampled in Azorean native forest over 6 years (2013–2018)
Contrasting with recent studies on the European and North American mainland, our study shows no evidence of a decline of overall species diversity for endemic and native non-endemic species, the data are limited to 6 years of sampling
Summary
Biodiversity loss is well recognised as a key challenge for this century (Sala et al, 2000; Cardinale et al, 2012). Insect biodiversity in particular is an essential component for ecosystem functioning (Allan et al, 2015; Bennett et al, 2015), so loss in insect diversity is a risk to both ecosystem sustainability and human health and well-being (Sandifer et al, 2015). Despite their importance, insect biodiversity and population abundances tend to be overlooked by the public, policy-makers and local and Editor: Simon Leather; Associate Editor: Raphael K. The rest of the world remains much less studied and to what point the current findings are general is unknown
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