Find research datasets worth reusing

Fig. 193 in Species review of the genus Gnypeta Thomson from Canada, Alaska and Greenland (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Aleocharinae): systematics, bionomics and distribution

Fig. 193. Collection localities in Canada and Alaska of G. minuta and G. sellmani.

Fig. 190 in Species review of the genus Gnypeta Thomson from Canada, Alaska and Greenland (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Aleocharinae): systematics, bionomics and distribution

Fig. 190. Collection localities in Canada and Alaska of G. ashei.

Fig. 197 in Species review of the genus Gnypeta Thomson from Canada, Alaska and Greenland (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Aleocharinae): systematics, bionomics and distribution

Fig. 197. Collection localities in Canada and Alaska of G. caerulea.

Fig. 191 in Species review of the genus Gnypeta Thomson from Canada, Alaska and Greenland (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Aleocharinae): systematics, bionomics and distribution

Fig. 191. Collection localities in Canada and Alaska of G. brincki.

Fig. 1 in Species review of the genus Gnypeta Thomson from Canada, Alaska and Greenland (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Aleocharinae): systematics, bionomics and distribution

Fig. 1. Gnypeta nigrella (LeConte), in dorsal view. Scale = 1 mm.

Fig. 198 in Species review of the genus Gnypeta Thomson from Canada, Alaska and Greenland (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Aleocharinae): systematics, bionomics and distribution

Fig. 198. Collection localities in Canada and Alaska of G. lohsei and G. canadiensis.

Fig. 196 in Species review of the genus Gnypeta Thomson from Canada, Alaska and Greenland (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Aleocharinae): systematics, bionomics and distribution

Fig. 196. Collection localities in Canada of G. brevicornis and G. uteana.

opencc-by-4.0May 2009View details →

Figures 29-30. Acontia distribution maps. 29 A. areloides. 30 A in Review of the Acontia areli group with descriptions of three new species (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae, Acontiinae)

Figures 29-30. Acontia distribution maps. 29 A. areloides. 30 A. albifusa.

opencc-zeroJun 2020View details →

Data from: Historical demography and climate driven distributional changes in a widespread Neotropical freshwater species with high economic importance

The Neotropical region exhibits the greatest worldwide diversity and the diversification history of several clades is related to the puzzling geomorphologic and climatic history of this region. The freshwater Amazon ecoregion contains the main hydrographic basins of the Neotropical region that are highly dendritic and ecologically diverse. It contains a rich and endemic fish fauna, including one of its most iconic and economically important representatives, the bony-tongue Arapaima gigas (Teleostei, Osteoglossiformes). Here, we evaluated the projected distribution of the genus in different historical periods (Present, Last Glacial Maximum, Last Interglacial Maximum and Near Future) and interpreted these results in light of the genomic diversity and modeled historical demography. For that, we combined species distribution models, population genetic analysis using SNPs and deep learning model selection. We analyzed a representative sample of the genus from the two basins where it naturally occurs, four localities in the Amazon (Am) and three in the Tocantins-Araguaia (To-Ar) basin, as well as individuals from three fish farms. We inferred a potentially smaller distribution in the glacial period, with a possible refuge in central Am. Our genetic data agrees with this result, suggesting a higher level of genetic diversity in the Am basin, compared to that observed in To-Ar. Our deep learning model comparison indicated that the To-Ar basin was colonized by the population from the Am basin. Considering a global warming scenario in the near future, A. gigas could reach an even larger range, especially if anthropogenic related dispersal occurs, potentially invading new areas and impacting their communities.

opencc-zeroJul 2020View details →

Data from: Foundation species promote local adaptation and fine-scale distribution of herbaceous plants

1) Interactions among neighbors can alter demography and traits of commingled species via adaptation or plasticity in phenotypic expression and understanding these two mechanisms in diverse communities is important for determining the ecological and evolutionary consequences of plant–plant interactions. 2) We reciprocally transplanted perennial species (Arenaria armerina and Festuca indigesta) among patches of two foundation shrub species and open ground to assess whether origin microsite (defined as the spatially distinct abiotic and biotic conditions associated with the two shrubs and open ground) determines germination, recruitment and growth that, in turn, promotes fine-scale distribution of species among microsites. In addition, we tested the effect of origin microsite on traits, competitive ability, drought tolerance and outlier loci to assess whether origin microsite conditions drove differences in traits, strategies and adaptive loci. 3) Germination was consistently greater for seeds planted back into their origin microsite relative to seeds sourced from foreign microsites, although this effect was weakened for recruitment. Plant growth was best in open sites regardless of origin microsite. In the greenhouse, A. armerina had conserved traits within origin microsite but distinct trait values among microsite conditions, specifically for plants originating from the most productive microsite (e.g. sufficient light and high nutrients and water availability). Festuca indigesta had conserved trait responses among microsites while within microsite, individuals had significant trait plasticity to different environmental conditions. The combined field and greenhouse results suggest that fine-scale distributions are supported by local adaptation among microsites of A. armerina and phenotypic plasticity of F. indigesta. Synthesis Adaptation or plasticity in phenotypic expression have different implications for demographic rate and persistence of species in changing environments. Local adaptation to neighbors suggests that reductions in foundation species diversity could concomitantly lead to reduced genetic diversity of commingled species while a plastic response indicates a more robust and broad response to changing climatic and biotic conditions.

opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

Species Abundance Distributions (SADs) for local tree communities in 1-ha forest plots on 20 tropical islands in the Indo-Pacific region

Species abundance distributions (SADs) characterise the distribution of individuals among species. This dataset was used to investigate the relative importance of disturbance regime (tropical cyclone regime) and island geography (the area and isolation of islands) on the shape of SADs.

opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

Influence of climate, soil and land cover on plant species distribution in the European Alps

Although the importance of edaphic factors and habitat structure for plant growth and survival is known, both are often neglected in favor of climatic drivers when investigating the spatial patterns of plant species and diversity. Yet, especially in mountain ecosystems with complex topography, missing edaphic and habitat components may be detrimental for a sound understanding of biodiversity distribution. Here, we compare the relative importance of climate, soil and land cover variables when predicting the distributions of 2'616 vascular plant species in the European Alps, representing approximately two thirds of all European Flora. Using presence-only data, we built point-process models (PPMs) to relate species observations to different combinations of covariates. We evaluated the PPMs through block cross-validations, and assessed the independent contributions of climate, soil and land cover covariates to predict plant species distributions using an innovative predictive partitioning approach. We found climate to be the most influential driver of spatial patterns in plant species with a relative influence of ~58.5% across all species, with decreasing importance from low to high elevations. Soil (~20.1%) and land cover (~21.4%), overall, were less influential than climate, but increased in importance along the elevation gradient. Furthermore, land cover showed strong local effects in lowlands, while the contribution of soil stabilized at mid-elevations. The decreasing influence of climate with elevation is explained by increasing endemism, and the fact that climate becomes more homogeneous as habitat diversity declines at higher altitudes. In contrast, soil predictors were found to follow the opposite trend. Additionally, at low elevations, human-mediated land cover effects appear to reduce the importance of climate predictors. We conclude that soil and land cover are, like climate, principal drivers of plant species distribution in the European Alps. While disentangling their effects remains a challenge, future studies can benefit markedly by including soil and land cover effects when predicting species distributions.

opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

Disentangling drivers of spatial autocorrelation in species distribution models

Species distribution models (SDMs) are frequently used to understand the influence of site properties on species occurrence. For robust model inference, SDMs need to account for the spatial autocorrelation of virtually all species occurrence data. Current methods do not routinely distinguish between extrinsic and intrinsic drivers of spatial autocorrelation, although these may have different implications for conservation. Here, we present and test a method that disentangles extrinsic and intrinsic drivers of spatial autocorrelation using repeated observations of a species. We focus on unknown habitat characteristics and conspecific interactions as extrinsic and intrinsic drivers, respectively. We model the former with spatially correlated random effects and the latter with an autocovariate, such that the spatially correlated random effects are constant across the repeated observations whereas the autocovariate may change. We tested the performance of our model on virtual species data and applied it to observations of the corncrake Crex crex in the Netherlands. Applying our model to virtual species data revealed that it was well able to distinguish between the two different drivers of spatial autocorrelation, outperforming models with no or a single component for spatial autocorrelation. This finding was independent of the direction of the conspecific interactions (i.e., conspecific attraction versus competitive exclusion). The simulations confirmed that the ability of our model to disentangle both drivers of autocorrelation depends on repeated observations. In the case study, we discovered that the corncrake has a stronger response to habitat characteristics compared to a model that did not include spatially correlated random effects, whereas conspecific interactions appeared to be less important. This implies that future conservation efforts should primarily focus on maximizing habitat availability. Our study shows how to systematically disentangle extrinsic and intrinsic drivers of spatial autocorrelation. The method we propose can help to correctly identify the main drivers of species distributions.

opencc-zeroJul 2021View details →

Data from: Climate oscillation and alien species invasion influences oceanic seabird distribution

Spatial and temporal distribution of seabird transiting and foraging at sea is an important consideration for marine conservation planning. Using at-sea observations of seabirds (n = 317), collected during the breeding season from 2012 to 2016, we built boosted regression tree (BRT) models to identify relationships between numerically dominant seabird species (red-footed booby, brown noddy, white tern and wedge-tailed shearwater), geomorphology, oceanographic variability, and climate oscillation in the Chagos Archipelago. We documented positive relationships between red-footed booby and wedge-tailed shearwater abundance with the strength in the Indian Ocean Dipole, as represented by the Dipole Mode Index (6.7% and 23.7% contribution respectively). The abundance of red-footed boobies, brown noddies and white terns declined abruptly with greater distance to island (17.6%, 34.1% and 41.1% contribution respectively). We further quantified the effects of proximity to rat-free and rat-invaded islands on seabird distribution at sea, and identify breaking point distribution thresholds. We identified areas of increased abundance at sea and habitat use-age under a scenario where rats are eradicated from invaded nearby islands and recolonised by seabirds. Following rat eradication, abundance at sea of red-footed booby, brown noddy, and white terns increased by 14%, 17% and 3% respectively, with no important increase detected for shearwaters. Our results have implication for seabird conservation and island restoration. Climate oscillations may cause shifts in seabird distribution, possibly through changes in regional productivity and prey distribution. Invasive species eradications and subsequent island recolonization can lead to greater access for seabirds to areas at-sea, due to increased foraging or transiting through, potentially leading to distribution gains and increased competition. Our approach predicting distribution after successful eradications enables anticipatory threat-mitigation in these areas, minimising competition between colonies and thereby maximising the risk of success and the conservation impact of eradication programmes.

opencc-zeroDec 2020View details →

Data from: Climate limitation at the cold edge – contrasting perspectives from species distribution modelling and a transplant experiment

The role of climate in determining range margins is often studied using species distribution models (SDMs), which are easily applied but have well-known limitations, e.g. due to their correlative nature and colonization and extinction time lags. Transplant experiments can give more direct information on environmental effects, but often cover small spatial and temporal scales. We simultaneously applied an SDM using high-resolution spatial predictors and an integral projection (demographic) model based on a transplant experiment at 58 sites to examine the effects of microclimate, light and soil conditions on the distribution and performance of a forest herb, Lathyrus vernus, at its cold range margin in central Sweden. In the SDM, occurrences were strongly associated with warmer climates. In contrast, only weak effects of climate were detected in the transplant experiment, whereas effects of soil conditions and light dominated. The higher contribution of climate in the SDM is likely a result from its correlation with soil quality, forest type, and potentially historic land use, which were unaccounted for in the model. Predicted habitat suitability and population growth rate, yielded by the two approaches, were not correlated across the transplant sites. We argue that the ranking of site habitat suitability is probably more reliable in the transplant experiment than in the SDM because predictors in the former better describe understory conditions, but that ranking might vary among years, e.g. due to differences in climate. Our results suggest that L. vernus is limited by soil and light rather than directly by climate at its northern range edge, where conifers dominate forests and create suboptimal conditions of soil and canopy-penetrating light. A general implication of our study is that to better understand how climate change influences range dynamics, we should not only strive to improve existing approaches but also to use multiple approaches in concert.

opencc-zeroJan 2021View details →

The mosaic distribution pattern of two sister bush-cricket species and the possible role of reproductive interference

Reproductive interference can shape regional distribution patterns in closely related species, if prezygotic isolation barriers are weak. The study of such interaction could be more challenging in nuptial gift-giving species due to the direct nutritional effects on both sexes of both species during copulation. We mapped the distribution of two sister bush-cricket species, Pholidoptera aptera and P. transsylvanica, at the northern margin of their overlapping ranges in Europe and, with a behavioural experiment, we tested the possibility of heterospecific mating. We found a very rare coexistence of species locally (0.5%, n = 391 sites) with mostly mutually exclusive distribution patterns, resulting in a mosaic pattern of sympatry, whereas they occupied the same climate niche in forest-dominated mountain landscape. Over 14 days of a mating experiment with seven mixed groups of conspecifics and heterospecifics (n = 56 individuals in total), the number of received spermatophores per female was 3–6 in P. aptera and 1–7 in P. transsylvanica. In total, we found 8.1% of heterospecific copulations (n = 99 transferred spermatophores with genetic identification of the donor species), while we also confirmed successful the transfer of heterospecific sperms into a female's reproductive system. Because bush-cricket females also obtain required nutrition from a heterospecific spermatophylax what should increase their fitness and fecundity, we suggest that their flexibility to mate with heterospecifics is beneficial and drives reproductive interference. This may substantially limit the reproductive success of the less frequent species (P. transsylvanica), coupled with eventual detrimental effects from hybridization, and result in the competitive exclusion of that species from their areas of coexistence.

opencc-zeroDec 2020View details →

Data from: Thermal tolerances and species interactions determine the elevational distributions of insects

Aim: While physiological limits to thermal extremes are often thought to determine the abundance and geographic distribution of species, more recent evidence suggests that species interactions may be equally important. Moreover, the relative importance of these constraints may shift with changing abiotic conditions, such as climate change. Here, we explore the relative importance of physiological tolerances to heat and species interactions in determining the distribution of insects along two elevational gradients. The gradients contrast in precipitation but not temperature, allowing us to separate these two climatic factors. Location: Montane rainforest in Costa Rica. Time period: 2015-2016. Major taxa studied: Bromeliad-dwelling aquatic insect larvae. Methods: We estimated the elevation preferences of five insect taxa by surveying 170 bromeliads along the moist Atlantic and the dry Pacific slopes of Monteverde, and experimentally determined their critical thermal maxima (CTmax). We determined if species-specific heat tolerances predict their elevation preferences, using Deming regressions, and tested if potential predators mediated elevation effects on species distributions, using structural equation models. Results: On the moist Atlantic slope, heat tolerances of insects explained their elevational distributions: taxa with high heat tolerances preferred low elevations where conditions are warmest, while taxa with low heat tolerances preferred high elevations where it is coldest. By contrast, on the drier Pacific slope, the elevational abundance pattern of many insects reflected negative interactions from cranefly larvae. These larvae are known to become predatory under drought conditions and were disproportionally abundant at low elevations on the Pacific slope. Main conclusions: We show that under drought, indirect effects mediated by species interactions can override any direct physiological effects of environmental conditions on insect distributions. The relative importance of limits to physiological tolerance and species interactions thus depends on environmental context, an important insight given that environmental conditions are expected to shift with climate change.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Form–function relationships in a marine foundation species depend on scale: a shoot to global perspective from a distributed ecological experiment

Form-function relationships in plants underlie their ecosystem roles in supporting higher trophic levels through primary production, detrital pathways, and habitat provision. For widespread, phenotypically-variable plants, productivity may differ not only across abiotic conditions, but also from distinct morphological or demographic traits. A single foundation species, eelgrass (Zostera marina), typically dominates north temperate seagrass meadows, which we studied across 14 sites spanning 32-61° N latitude and two ocean basins. Body size varied by nearly two orders of magnitude through this range, and was largest at mid-latitudes and in the Pacific Ocean. At the global scale, neither latitude, site-level environmental conditions, nor body size helped predict productivity (relative growth rate 1-2% d-1 at most sites), suggesting a remarkable capacity of Z. marina to achieve similar productivity in summer. Furthermore, among a suite of stressors applied within sites, only ambient leaf damage reduced productivity; grazer reduction and nutrient addition had no effect on eelgrass size or growth. Scale-dependence was evident in different allometric relationships within and across sites for productivity and for modules (leaf count) relative to size. Z. marina provides a range of ecosystem functions related to both body size (habitat provision, water flow) and growth rates (food, carbon dynamics). Our observed decoupling of body size and maximum production suggests that geographic variation in these ecosystem functions may be independent, with a future need to resolve how local adaptation or plasticity of body size might actually enable more consistent peak productivity across disparate environmental conditions.

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →

Data from: A framework for simultaneous tests of abiotic, biotic, and historical drivers of species distributions: empirical tests for North American wood warblers based on climate and pollen

Understanding how abiotic, biotic and historical factors shape species distributions remains a central question in ecology, but studies linking biotic factors to continental-scale patterns remain scarce. Here, we present a novel framework for simultaneously testing patterns expected when abiotic, biotic or historical factors drive species range limits. We use ecological niche models to produce empirical estimates of the "Biotic, Abiotic, and Movement" paradigm (BAM diagrams), which previously had only been used theoretically. Based on climatic and pollen data, as well as explicit consideration of dispersal limitations, we implement the framework for a group of North American birds (Oreothlypis warblers) with clear habitat associations. Because the pollen-based predictor variables characterize vegetation, they represent biotic factors needed by each bird species. Although continental-scale patterns of distribution traditionally are attributed to abiotic factors, only one species matched the hypothesis of solely abiotic drivers. In contrast, pollen-based models indicate biotic drivers for two species, correctly predicting their absence in climatically suitable areas. These results highlight the feasibility of considering and quantifying potential effects of biotic interactions on species ranges, especial when interactions can be decoupled from abiotic factors. Furthermore, the availability of pollen data now and in the Holocene highlights the potential of these data to be used to predict range shifts of other organisms tightly dependent on particular vegetation types.