Esclareciendo los mecanismos que promueven la variación en las historias de vida de los membrácidos en los gradientes altitudinales
Date
2018-11
Authors
Flórez Valencia, Camilo
Cardona Duque, Juliana
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universidad CES
Abstract
Tropical mountains are formed by mosaics of environmental gradients, leading to
biotic radiation and adaptive divergence. Species can respond to changes in
elevational gradients in different ways, leading to different patterns of richness
variation and metacommunity structure. The insect family Membracidae -
treehoppers -, are widely distributed along mountains. Previous works in
treehoppers suggested that richness decreases with elevation, and also suggested
that variation in life histories is an important factor shaping these patterns. Despite
these earlier contributions, some aspects of treehopper ecology such as
metacommunity structure and richness trends at different taxonomic levels along
elevational gradients, remain unexplored to date. Therefore, we searched for
treehoppers along two elevational gradients in Colombia, to assess the variation in
species richness, beta-diversity, and to describe the structure of treehopper
metacommunities along these elevational gradients. We found that richness of all
treehopper taxa decreased linearly with an increase in elevation, but with different
trends among treehopper tribes. The proportion of species endemic to Colombia
increased with elevation. Both gradients studied exhibited a Clementsian
metacommunity structure, defined by clumped species boundaries and
compositional unity along different portions of the elevational gradients, resulting in
three discrete groups of communities or compartments. Each gradient and
compartment exhibited different variation in beta-diversity richness and
replacement components. These results provide insights into the mechanisms
underlying treehopper elevational diversity pattern
Description
Keywords
Insectos, Facultad de Ciencias y Biotecnología - Pregrado en Biología, Membracidos