Department of Biology, University of Turku, FI-20014 Turku, Finland.
University of Bordeaux, INRAE, BIOGECO, Cestas, France.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Sep 10;838(Pt 1):155800. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155800. Epub 2022 May 10.
Environmental pollution is one of the major drivers of the present-day decline in global biodiversity. However, the links between the effects of industrial pollution on insect communities and the underlying species-specific responses remain poorly understood. We explored the spatial pattern in insect communities by analysing 581 samples of moths and butterflies (containing 25,628 individuals of 345 species) collected along a strong pollution gradient in subarctic Russia, and we recorded temporal changes in these communities during the pollution decline that occurred from 1992 to 2006. In the 1990s, the diversity of the Lepidoptera community was positively correlated with the distance from the copper-nickel smelter at Monchegorsk. The overall abundance of Lepidoptera did not change along the pollution gradient, although the abundance of many species decreased with increasing pollution. The responses of each individual species to pollution were associated with its life history traits. The abundances of monophagous species that fed inside live plant tissues and hibernated as imagoes or pupae were not affected by pollution, whereas the abundances of oligophagous and polyphagous species that fed externally on plants and hibernated as larvae generally declined near the smelter. Substantial decreases in aerial emissions from the smelter between 1992 and 2006 resulted in an increase in the diversity of moths and butterflies in severely polluted habitats, whereas their overall abundance did not change. This recovery of the Lepidoptera community occurred due to the reappearance of rare species that had been previously extirpated by pollution and was observed despite the lack of any signs of recovery of the vegetation in the heavily polluted sites. We conclude that the recovery trajectories of insect communities following emission control can be predicted from studies of their changes along spatial pollution gradients by using space-for-time substitution.
环境污染是导致当今全球生物多样性下降的主要因素之一。然而，工业污染对昆虫群落的影响与潜在的物种特异性反应之间的联系仍知之甚少。我们通过分析在俄罗斯亚北极地区沿强烈污染梯度采集的 581 个蛾和蝴蝶样本（包含 345 个物种的 25628 个个体），来研究昆虫群落的空间格局，并记录了 1992 年至 2006 年期间污染下降过程中这些群落的时间变化。在 20 世纪 90 年代，鳞翅目昆虫群落的多样性与 Monchegorsk 的铜镍冶炼厂的距离呈正相关。沿污染梯度，鳞翅目昆虫的总体丰度没有变化，尽管许多物种的丰度随着污染的增加而减少。每个物种对污染的反应与其生活史特征有关。以活植物组织内部为食并以成虫或蛹形式冬眠的单食性物种的丰度不受污染影响，而以植物外部为食并以幼虫形式冬眠的寡食性和多食性物种的丰度则在冶炼厂附近普遍下降。1992 年至 2006 年间，冶炼厂的空气排放大量减少，导致严重污染生境中蛾和蝴蝶的多样性增加，而其总体丰度没有变化。尽管在重度污染的地点没有任何植被恢复的迹象，但由于先前被污染消灭的稀有物种的重新出现，鳞翅目昆虫群落得以恢复。我们得出结论，通过使用时空替代法，从研究昆虫群落沿空间污染梯度的变化来预测昆虫群落在排放控制后的恢复轨迹。
