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1. Living on the edge: The sensitivity of arthropods to development and climate along an urban-wildland interface in the Sonoran Desert of central Arizona

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297227  

   Uhey, Derek A; Hofstetter, Richard W; Earl, Stevan; Holden, Jerry; Sprague, Tiffany; Rowe, Helen (April 2024, PLOS ONE)

   Mansour, Ramzi (Ed.)

   Preservation of undeveloped land near urban areas is a common conservation practice. However, ecological processes may still be affected by adjacent anthropogenic activities. Ground-dwelling arthropods are a diverse group of organisms that are critical to ecological processes such as nutrient cycling, which are sensitive to anthropogenic activities. Here, we study arthropod dynamics in a preserve located in a heavily urbanized part of the Sonoran Desert, Arizona, U.S.. We compared arthropod biodiversity and community composition at ten locations, four paired sites representing the urban edge and one pair in the Preserve interior. In total, we captured and identified 25,477 arthropod individuals belonging to 287 lowest practical taxa (LPT) over eight years of sampling. This included 192 LPTs shared between interior and edge sites, with 44 LPTs occurring exclusively in interior sites and 48 LPTs occurring exclusively in edge sites. We found two site pairs had higher arthropod richness on the preserve interior, but results for evenness were mixed among site pairs. Compositionally, the interior and edge sites were more than 40% dissimilar, driven by species turnover. Importantly, we found that some differences were only apparent seasonally; for example edge sites had more fire ants than interior sites only during the summer. We also found that temperature and precipitation were strong predictors of arthropod composition. Our study highlights that climate can interact with urban edge effects on arthropod biodiversity. 

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2. Shedding light on dark taxa in sky‐island Appalachian leaf litter: Assessing patterns of endemicity using large‐scale, voucher‐based barcoding

   https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12697  

   Caterino, Michael_S; Recuero, Ernesto (November 2023, Insect Conservation and Diversity)

   Abstract Developing systematic conservation plans depends on a wealth of information on a region's biodiversity. For ‘dark taxa' such as arthropods, such data are usually very incomplete and in most cases left out from assessments.Sky islands are important and often fragile biodiversity hotspots. Southern Appalachian high‐elevation spruce–fir forests represent a particularly threatened sky‐island ecosystem, hosting numerous endemic and threatened species, but their arthropods remain understudied.Here we use voucher‐based megabarcoding to explore genetic differentiation among leaf‐litter arthropod communities of these highlands, and to examine the extent to which they represent dispersed communities of more or less coherent species, manageable as a distributed unit. We assembled a dataset comprising more than 6000 COI sequences representing diverse arthropod groups to assess species richness and sharing across peaks and ranges. Comparisons were standardised across taxa using automated species delimitation, measuring endemism levels by putative species.Species richness was high, with sites hosting from 86 to 199 litter arthropod species (not including mites or myriapods). Community profiles suggest that around one fourth of these species are unique to single sky islands and more than one third of all species are limited to a particular range. Across major taxa, endemicity was lowest in Araneae, and highest in neglected groups like Isopoda, Pseudoscorpionida, Protura and Diplura.Southern Appalachian sky islands of spruce–fir habitat host significantly distinct leaf‐litter arthropod communities, with high levels of local endemicity. This is the first work to provide such a clear picture of peak and range uniqueness for a taxonomically broad sample. Ensuring the protection of a sizeable fraction of high‐elevation litter species richness will therefore require attention at a relatively fine spatial scale. 

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3. Arthropods are kin: Operationalizing Indigenous data sovereignty to respectfully utilize genomic data from Indigenous lands

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13822  

   Hutchins, Leke; Mc Cartney, Ann; Graham, Natalie; Gillespie, Rosemary; Guzman, Aidee (July 2023, Molecular Ecology Resources)

   Abstract Indigenous peoples have cultivated biodiverse agroecosystems since time immemorial. The rise of metagenomics and high‐throughput sequencing technologies in biodiversity studies has rapidly expanded the scale of data collection from these lands. A respectful approach to the data life cycle grounded in the sovereignty of indigenous communities is imperative to not perpetuate harm. In this paper, we operationalize an indigenous data sovereignty (IDS) framework to outline realistic considerations for genomic data that span data collection, governance, and communication. As a case study for this framework, we use arthropod genomic data collected from diversified and simplified farm sites close to and far from natural habitats within a historic Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Indigenous Hawaiian) agroecosystem. Diversified sites had the highest Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) richness for native and introduced arthropods. There may be a significant spillover effect between forest and farm sites, as farm sites near a natural habitat had higher OTU richness than those farther away. We also provide evidence that management factors such as the number of Polynesian crops cultivated may drive arthropod community composition. Through this case study, we emphasize the context‐dependent opportunities and challenges for operationalizing IDS by utilizing participatory research methods, expanding novel data management tools through the Local Contexts Hub, and developing and nurturing community partnerships—all while highlighting the potential of agroecosystems for arthropod conservation. Overall, the workflow and the example presented here can help researchers take tangible steps to achieve IDS, which often seems elusive with the expanding use of genomic data. 

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4. Land use changes result in increased phylogenetic clustering and preferential loss of species-rich sites for Michigan floral assemblages.

   https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2967584/v1  

   Figueroa, Héctor Fox; Grady, CJ; Cortez, Maria_Beatriz_de Souza; Beach, Jim; Stewart, Aimee; Soltis, Douglas E; Soltis, Pamela S; Smith, Stephen A (May 2023, Research Square)

   Abstract Distribution models are widely used to understand landscape biodiversity patterns, facilitate evolutionary and ecological studies, and for making informed conservation decisions. While it is common to examine consequences of climate change, impacts of land use on distributions, a major factor in limiting ranges and corridors between populations, are less well understood. Here, we use distribution models to quantify changes in biodiversity due to land use for Michigan floral assemblages. We leveraged a distribution model dataset (1930 species) integrated with dated phylogenetic information and USGS land use maps to parse Michigan areas with unsuitable habitat. Additionally, we quantify the degree of high-quality habitat lost for each species, identifying those most strongly impacted by land use changes. Approx. 39% of Michigan terrestrial habitat fell within “unsuitable” land use categories. Sites predicted to harbor the most species based on climatic variables were those sites that lost the greatest proportion due to land use changes. Further, excluded sites were preferentially those composed of more phylogenetically even communities. Overall, the impact of land use changes on community species richness was the preferential loss of sites with the predicted highest biodiversity. For phylodiversity metrics, land use changes increased the degree of community phylogenetic clustering. This results in overall decreased phylodiversity, leading to assemblages less equipped to respond to rapid climatic changes. Our results confirm land use to be a major, but somewhat overlooked, factor impacting local diversity dynamics and illustrate how local-scale land use impacts regional-scale richness and phylodiversity patterns, likely leading to increased community fragility. 

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5. Arthropod communities in the Second College Grant, NH ver 1

   https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/7333f727fc8396555d18913d6e8e6d52  

   Ziadeh, Christopher P; Ziadeh, Shayleigh B; Aflague, Breanne H; Townley, Mark A; Ayres, Matthew P; Garnas, Jeffrey R (January 2023, Environmental Data Initiative)

   Arthropods are active during the winter in temperate regions. Many use the seasonal snowpack as a buffer against harsh ambient conditions and remain active in a refugium known as the subnivium. While the use of the subnivium by insects and other arthropods is well-established, far less is known about winter community composition, abundance, biomass, and diversity and how these characteristics compare with the community in the summer. Understanding subnivean communities is especially important given observed and anticipated changes in snowpack depth and duration with changing climate. We studied winter and summer insects and other arthropods using pitfall trapping in northern New Hampshire, where snowpack is still relatively intact. We found that compositions of the subnivium and summer arthropod communities differed. The subnivium arthropod community featured moderate levels of richness and other measures of diversity that tended to be lower than in the summer community. More striking, the subnivium community was much lower in overall abundance and biomass than the summer community. Interestingly, some groups and species of arthropods were dominant in the subnivium but either rare or absent in summer collections. These putative “subnivium specialists” included one spider (order: Araneae), Cicurina brevis (Emerton, 1890), and three rove beetles (order: Coleoptera, family: Staphylinidae) Arpedium cribratum Fauvel, 1878, Lesteva pallipes LeConte, 1863, and Porrhodites inflatus (Hatch, 1957). This study provides a detailed account of the subnivium arthropod community, presents novel concepts, and establishes baseline information on arthropod communities in the North American northeastern temperate forest. 

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