Meloni Fernando, F Civieta Berta, A Zaragoza Juan, Lourdes Moraza María, Bautista Susana
Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, CEP 14040-901 Ribeirão Preto, Brazil.
Department of Ecology and IMEM, University of Alicante, E-03690 San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain.
Insects. 2020 Jan 18;11(1):59. doi: 10.3390/insects11010059.
The ecological functioning of dryland ecosystems is closely related to the spatial pattern of the vegetation, which is typically structured in patches. Ground arthropods mediate key soil functions and ecological processes, yet little is known about the influence of dryland vegetation pattern on their abundance and diversity. Here, we investigate how patch size and cover, and distance between patches relate to the abundance and diversity of meso-and microarthropods in semi-arid steppes. We found that species richness and abundance of ground arthropods exponentially increase with vegetation cover, patch size, and patch closeness. The communities under vegetation patches mainly respond to patch size, while the communities in the bare-soil interpatches are mostly controlled by the average distance between patches, independently of the concurrent changes in vegetation cover. Large patches seem to play a critical role as reserve and source of ground arthropod diversity. Our results suggest that decreasing vegetation cover and/or changes in vegetation pattern towards small and over-dispersed vegetation patches can fast lead to a significant loss of ground arthropods diversity in drylands.
旱地生态系统的生态功能与植被的空间格局密切相关，植被通常呈斑块状分布。地面节肢动物介导着关键的土壤功能和生态过程，但关于旱地植被格局对其丰度和多样性的影响，人们了解甚少。在此，我们研究斑块大小、覆盖度以及斑块间距离如何与半干旱草原中中型和微型节肢动物的丰度和多样性相关。我们发现，地面节肢动物的物种丰富度和丰度随植被覆盖度、斑块大小和斑块邻近度呈指数增长。植被斑块下的群落主要对斑块大小作出反应，而裸土斑块间的群落大多受斑块间平均距离控制，与植被覆盖度的同时变化无关。大型斑块似乎作为地面节肢动物多样性的储备和来源发挥着关键作用。我们的结果表明，植被覆盖度降低和/或植被格局向小而过度分散的植被斑块变化，会迅速导致旱地地面节肢动物多样性的显著丧失。
