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Plant diversity accurately predicts insect diversity in two tropical landscapes
Author(s) -
Zhang Kai,
Lin Siliang,
Ji Yinqiu,
Yang Chenxue,
Wang Xiaoyang,
Yang Chunyan,
Wang Hesheng,
Jiang Haisheng,
Harrison Rhett D.,
Yu Douglas W.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
molecular ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.619
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1365-294X
pISSN - 0962-1083
DOI - 10.1111/mec.13770
Subject(s) - species richness , arthropod , biology , ecology , biodiversity , species diversity , gamma diversity , alpha diversity
Plant diversity surely determines arthropod diversity, but only moderate correlations between arthropod and plant species richness had been observed until Basset et al . (Science, 338, 2012 and 1481) finally undertook an unprecedentedly comprehensive sampling of a tropical forest and demonstrated that plant species richness could indeed accurately predict arthropod species richness. We now require a high‐throughput pipeline to operationalize this result so that we can (i) test competing explanations for tropical arthropod megadiversity, (ii) improve estimates of global eukaryotic species diversity, and (iii) use plant and arthropod communities as efficient proxies for each other, thus improving the efficiency of conservation planning and of detecting forest degradation and recovery. We therefore applied metabarcoding to Malaise‐trap samples across two tropical landscapes in China. We demonstrate that plant species richness can accurately predict arthropod (mostly insect) species richness and that plant and insect community compositions are highly correlated, even in landscapes that are large, heterogeneous and anthropogenically modified. Finally, we review how metabarcoding makes feasible highly replicated tests of the major competing explanations for tropical megadiversity.