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Thrilled to share our recent paper about rove beetles, elevation, and climatic change in @EcographyJourna with @Alex_Smith_Ants @shoshanahjacobs @aj_brunke @elyssaloewen @jones_kelss @ACGuanacaste @UofGResearch
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.05427
A thread!
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.05427
A thread!
A quick summary… elevation gradients serve as climatic gradients & therefore are the perfect system to look at how abiotic factors influence species community dynamics. We did this in beautiful Costa Rica @ACGuanacaste across a 1500m elevation gradient
So we asked, how do some of the most diverse animals on earth, the rove beetles, change across a 1500m neotropical elevation gradient?
We used DNA barcoding to determine community dynamics like species richness and phylogenetic community structure. Which meant, lots and lots and lots of tiny little beetles to sample. Thank you to all students who helped with this!
What did we find? Well, typically studies of diversity across elevation have a few common patterns patterns: increase in diversity with elev, and a mid-elevation peak. There is a plethora of different reasons for this, check out McCain & Grytness 2010 for more info.
Instead, very weirdly, we found that richness actually increased with elevation! A pattern pretty rare in elevation + richness studies. This means most of our beetles enjoy these cold & wet high elevation habitats
The question is then why? This is in contrast to species area hypothesis, and other elevation patterns. Well, maybe it has to do with historical patterns… on that cliffhanger check out our paper!! Lots more detail & more data to be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.05427
Thank you to our collaborators, reviewers, and funders for helping with this project. Thank you to Costa Rica, @ACGuanacaste, and the bugs that live there for being so special & wonderful.
