Moth diversity increases along a continent-wide gradient of environmental productivity in South African savannahs

0560398 - BC 2023 RIV CH eng J - Journal Article
Delabye, Sylvain - Storch, D. - Sedláček, O. - Albrecht, Tomáš - Hořák, D. - Maicher, Vincent - Tószögyová, A. - Tropek, Robert
Moth diversity increases along a continent-wide gradient of environmental productivity in South African savannahs.
Insects. Roč. 13, č. 9 (2022), č. článku 778. E-ISSN 2075-4450
Institutional support: RVO:60077344 ; RVO:68081766
Keywords : abundance * Afrotropics * Heterocera
OECD category: Ecology; Ecology (UBO-W)
Impact factor: 3, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Open access
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/13/9/778/pdf?version=1661693677

Environmental productivity, i.e., the amount of biomass produced by primary producers, belongs among the key factors for the biodiversity patterns. Although the relationship of diversity to environmental productivity differs among studied taxa, detailed data are largely missing for most groups, including insects. Here, we present a study of moth diversity patterns at local and regional scales along a continent-wide gradient of environmental productivity in southern African savannah ecosystems. We sampled diversity of moths (Lepidoptera: Heterocera) at 120 local plots along a gradient of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from the Namib Desert to woodland savannahs along the Zambezi River. By standardized light trapping, we collected 12,372 specimens belonging to 487 moth species. The relationship between species richness for most analyzed moth groups and environmental productivity was significantly positively linear at the local and regional scales. The absence of a significant relationship of most moth groups’ abundance to environmental productivity did not support the role of the number of individuals in the diversity–productivity relationship for south African moths. We hypothesize the effects of water availability, habitat complexity, and plant diversity drive the observed moth diversity patterns.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0339247