Hawksworth / Bull Arthropod Diversity and Conservation

1. Auflage 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4020-5204-0
Verlag: Springer Netherland
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 517 Seiten, eBook

Reihe: Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation

Despite their enormous bulk and complexity of architecture, plants make up only around a quarter of a million of the 8 million or so species on Earth. The major components of biodiversity, instead, are the smaller, largely unseen, silent majority of invertebrates – most of which are arthropods. Vertebrates, a mere blip on the biotic horizon, are elevated in importance in the bigger scheme of things only by the human psyche.This collection of more than 30 peer-reviewed papers focuses on the diversity and conservation of arthropods, whose species inhabit virtually every recess and plane – and feature somewhere in virtually every food web – on the planet. Highlighting issues ranging from large-scale disturbance to local management, and from spatial heterogeneity to temporal patterns, these papers reflect some of the most exciting new research taking place today – and in some of the most biodiverse corners of the planet.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hawksworth, David L.

Bull, Alan T.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Arthropod diversity in Lama forest reserve (South Benin), a mosaic of natural, degraded and plantation forests.- Ecosystem disturbances and diversity increase: implications for invertebrate conservation.- Effects of landscape elements on the distribution of the rare bumblebee species Bombus muscorum in an agricultural landscape.- How ant nests increase soil biota richness and abundance: a field experiment.- Host specificity, alpha- and beta-diversity of phytophagous beetles in two tropical forests in Panama.- Vertical and temporal patterns of biodiversity of fruit-feeding butterflies in a tropical forest in Uganda.- Associations between weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionidea) and plants, and conservation values in two tussock grasslands, Otago, New Zealand.- Effects of management intensity and season on arboreal ant diversity and abundance in coffee agroecosystems.- Influence of habitat fragmentation on the genetic variability in leaf litter ant populations in tropical rainforests of Sabah, Borneo.- Comparing relative model fit of several species-accumulation functions to local Papilionoidea and Hesperioidea butterfly inventories of Mediterranean habitats.- The habitat requirement of the Genji-firefly Luciola cruciata (Coleoptera : Lampyridae), a representative endemic species of Japanese rural landscapes.- Diversity of Chrysomelidae (Coleoptera) in Galicia, Northwest Spain: estimating the completeness of the regional inventory.- Topographic heterogeneity plays a crucial role for grasshopper diversity in a southern African megabiodiversity hotspot.- Landscape effects on the genetic structure of the ground beetle Poecilus versicolor STURM 1824.- The response of ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) to selection cutting in a South Carolina bottomland hardwood forest.- Factors influencing bug diversity (Insecta: Heteroptera) in semi-natural habitats.- Insect colonisation of fruiting bodies of the wood-decaying fungus Fomitopsis pinicola at different distances from an old-growth forest.- Dragonfly assemblages in arid tropical environments: a case study from western Namibia.- Richness, abundance, and complementarity of fruit-feeding butterfly species in relict sacred forests and forest reserves of Ghana.- Ecological impact assessment of the Aznalcóllar mine toxic spill on edaphic coleopteran communities in the Guadiamar River basin (Southern Iberian Peninsula).- Diversity of the scuttle fly (Diptera: Phoridae) communities in the plantations of moist pine forests of the Bia?owie?a Primeval Forest and the Tuchola Forest (Poland).- Spatial distribution of ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) and moths (Lepidoptera) in the Mrtvý luh bog, Šumava Mts (Central Europe): a test of habitat island community.- Surrogate habitats demonstrate the invasion potential of the African pugnacious ant.- Impacts of catastrophic earthquakes on the insect communities in estuarine mangroves, northern Taiwan.- Countryside Stewardship Scheme and butterflies: a study of plant and butterfly species richness.- Habitat specificity and variation of coleopteran assemblages between habitats in a Southern African (Swaziland) agricultural landscape.- Effects of habitat disturbance can be subtle yet significant: biodiversity of hawkmoth-assemblages (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) in Southeast-Asia.- The importance of ants and high-shade management to coffee pollination and fruit weight in Chiapas, Mexico.- Sampling to assess a re-established Appalachian forest in Ohio based on gelechioid moths (Lepidoptera: Gelechioidea).- Diversity patterns of Bornean butterfly assemblages.

Leseproben

Ecosystem disturbances and diversity increase: implications for invertebrate conservation (p. 25)

RAFAEL DIAS LOYOLA, SOFIA-LUIZA BRITO and RODRIGO LOPES FERREIRAKey words: Conservation, Diversity, Ecosystem disturbances, Management, Neotropics, Pantanal, Soil Arthropods

Abstract.
The Pantanal is one of the faunistic provinces considered as a priority area for invertebrate conservation. However, it is one of the areas in Brazil where the local fauna is less assessed, thus needing more scienti.c information that could allow political decisions to be made regarding conservation. The continuous pressure for new pasture areas leads to improper habitat occupation and destruction, like fragmentation of forest areas in the region. Such alterations can cause di.erent impacts on the local fauna, including the soil arthropods.

The main objective of this work was to compare the morphospecies composition, diversity and density of the soil arthropod fauna between a secondary single species forest (Cambarazal) and a cultivated pasture with exotic and native grass species, using only pitfall traps as sampling method. We found a great variation on the vegetal cover among environments.

A higher humidity in the forest soil was observed, as well as a greater compaction of the soil in the cultivated pasture. A total of 3635 individuals were collected, belonging to 214 different morphospecies. 139 morphospecies were collected in the forest (37% exclusive to this environment), while 134 morphospecies were collected in the cultivated pasture (35% exclusive). The diversity was higher in the forest (H¢ = 1.634) than in the cultivated pasture (H¢ = 1.253).

However, considering the area as a whole (forest and pasture) the global diversity was increased. In this paper we discuss about the effects of environmental changes on soil arthropod diversity and propose a hypothetical model for invertebrate management in mosaic ecosystems.

Introduction
The Pantanal is a vast area dominated by a complex of .ora and fauna often called the Pantanal Complex (Rizzini 1997). The whole area is strongly influenced by the rain regime that generates tidal cycles and the resulting floods deposit nutrients through the silt deposits and organic detritus suspended in the water. On top of some higher formations, called ‘cordilheiras’, there are fields and forests never flooded before.

In areas where the water runs relatively faster there are huge fields with the dominance of grass that are mainly used by the many cattle farms in the region. These fields are the native pastures. There is a dominancy of vegetal species in some areas, creating vast conglomerations as the ‘Paratudal’, a grouping of Paratudo (Tabebuia aurea), and the ‘Cambarazal’, a grouping of Cambara´ (Vochysia divergens) (Rizzini 1997).

Nowadays, the native pastures are very important to the economy of the Brazilian mid-west region, especially in the Cerrado areas. Native pastures occupy around 39% of this environment area, which support a livestock of 66 million individuals or almost 40% of the national livestock (Filgueiras and Wechsler 1992). It is expected that these numbers could increase to 210 million by 2010 (Meirelles 1996).