Vertebrates are poor umbrellas for invertebrates: cross‐taxon congruence in an Australian tropical savanna

Autor: Stefanie K. Oberprieler, Alan N. Andersen, Graeme R. Gillespie, Luke D. Einoder
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Ecosphere, Vol 10, Iss 6, Pp n/a-n/a (2019)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2150-8925
DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.2755
Popis: Abstract Invertebrates are commonly ignored in conservation planning due to their vast diversity, difficulties with species identification, a poor understanding of their spatial patterns, and the impracticability of carrying out comprehensive sampling. Conservation planning for fauna is therefore often based on patterns of diversity and distribution of vertebrates, under the assumption that these are representative of animal diversity more generally. Here, we evaluate how well vertebrates act as umbrellas for invertebrate diversity and distribution in a highly diverse tropical savanna landscape, and we investigate the effect of vertebrate sampling intensity (i.e., number of surveys) on congruence results. We assessed congruence between each of the four classes of terrestrial vertebrates (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) and twelve invertebrate families (representing four dominant invertebrate taxa: ants, beetles, flies, and spiders) by applying a range of modeling approaches to analyze patterns of cross‐taxon congruence in species richness and composition across sampling sites. To investigate drivers of congruence, we applied generalized and distance‐based linear models to identify environmental associations of richness and composition for each taxon, then examined variation in environmental associations across taxa. Vertebrate and invertebrate richness was weakly (
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