Elsa De Filippo, Adeline Soulier-Perkins, Raphaël Cornette, Eric Guilbert
UMR7179 MECADEV Muséum National D'histoire Naturelle Paris France.
UMR7205 ISYEB Muséum National D'histoire Naturelle Paris France.
Ecol Evol. 2025 Jun 17;15(6):e71479. doi: 10.1002/ece3.71479. eCollection 2025 Jun.
Mountains are an ideal context to study species community and adaptation in relation to environmental changes such as temperature and vegetation profile. Such changes produce different ecological niches that can be a source of local adaptations in the communities, like body size varying with elevation, for example. In this context, planthoppers (Insects, Hempitera, Fulgoromorpha) community and their species traits were studied along an altitudinal gradient in Mount Wilhelm (Papua New Guinea) to test niche and morphological trait conservatism in relation to environmental filtering. Niche conservatism is significant at high altitude for Cixiidae, and forewing shape is conserved. This is not the case for Achilidae and Derbidae, for which forewing shape is not conserved and forewing relative length increases in size with altitude. These variations in size and shape translate an adaptation of Achilidae and Derbidae to high altitudes; while closely related species of Cixiidae tend to keep the same ecological niche, and then, forewing size and shape are maintained.
山脉是研究物种群落以及与温度和植被分布等环境变化相关的适应性的理想环境。此类变化会产生不同的生态位，而生态位可能是群落中局部适应性的来源，例如体型会随海拔高度而变化。在此背景下，沿着巴布亚新几内亚威廉山的海拔梯度，对飞虱（昆虫纲，半翅目，蜡蝉总科）群落及其物种特征进行了研究，以检验与环境过滤相关的生态位和形态特征保守性。对于广翅蜡蝉科而言，生态位保守性在高海拔地区很显著，前翅形状得以保留。但锥头叶蝉科和缘脊叶蝉科并非如此，它们的前翅形状不保守，且前翅相对长度随海拔升高而增大。这些大小和形状的变化体现了锥头叶蝉科和缘脊叶蝉科对高海拔的适应性；而广翅蜡蝉科的近缘物种往往保持相同的生态位，进而前翅大小和形状得以维持。
