Sensitivity of biodiversity indices to life history stage, habitat type and landscape in Odonata community

Abstract

Assessing biodiversity and prioritizing the conservation of sites requires a robust methodology that minimizes the estimation errors of biodiversity indices and thus maximizes management efficiency. In aquatic insects, while there is still a debate about the use of different life history stages to increase the reliability of the biodiversity estimates, little is known about the effect of habitat and landscape characteristics. Here, odonates are used to assess the sensitivity of important biodiversity indices to the use of different life history stages (adult, oviposition, exuvia, and larva) and the influence of habitat type (lotic vs. lentic) and freshwater landscape complexity (proximity to a diversity of wetlands). Unlike exuvia and larvae, the use of adults gave inaccurate estimates of species richness, Relative Taxonomic Distinctness (RTD), Conservation Priority Index (CPI), but was quite reliable for Dragonfly Biotic Index (DBI). Interestingly, recording the mating state (oviposition) of the adult improved the accuracy of RTD and CPI by ≈40 and 60%, respectively. The estimation bias was higher in lotic than in lentic habitat and it increased with the freshwater landscape complexity. Our study shows that applying a multi-life stage approach in biodiversity indices reveals site connectivity at the landscape level.