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Local-scale dispersal constraints promote spatial structure and arthropod diversity within a tropical sky-island
  • +3
  • Nancy Gálvez-Reyes,
  • Paula Arribas,
  • Carmelo Andujar,
  • Brent Emerson,
  • Daniel Piñero,
  • Alicia Mastretta-Yanes
Nancy Gálvez-Reyes
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Instituto de Ecologia

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Paula Arribas
IPNA
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Carmelo Andujar
IPNA
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Brent Emerson
IPNA
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Daniel Piñero
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Instituto de Ecologia
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Alicia Mastretta-Yanes
CONABIO
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Abstract

Physical disruption of gene flow among mountains is commonly viewed as an important process for the generation of hyperdiverse tropical mountain biotas. However, the role of in situ diversification within mountains has been seldom explored. Here we evaluate spatially fine-scale patterns of arthropod community assembly within a single mountain to understand the role of dispersal limitation and landscape features as drivers of tropical mountain diversity. We focus on a single tropical sky-island of the Transmexican Volcanic Belt, where we sampled whole-communities of arthropods for eight orders with a comparable design at a spatial scale ranging from 50 m to 20 km, using 840 pitfall traps and whole community metabarcoding. We explored multiple hierarchical levels, from individual haplotypes to lineages at 0.5, 1.5, 3, 5, 7.5% similarity thresholds, to evaluate patterns of richness, turnover and distance decay of similarity with isolation-by-distance and isolation-by-resistance approaches. Our results showed that distance and altitude influence distance decay of similarity at all hierarchical levels. This holds for arthropod groups of contrasting dispersal abilities, but with different strength depending on the spatial scale. Our results suggest long-term persistence of lineages within sky islands, combined with local-scale differentiation, may be an important driver of high arthropod biodiversity in tropical mountains.
03 Oct 2020Submitted to Molecular Ecology
04 Oct 2020Submission Checks Completed
04 Oct 2020Assigned to Editor
14 Oct 2020Reviewer(s) Assigned
15 Feb 2021Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
22 Feb 2021Editorial Decision: Revise Minor
28 May 20211st Revision Received
28 May 2021Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
07 Jun 2021Editorial Decision: Revise Minor
05 Jul 2021Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
05 Jul 20212nd Revision Received
16 Jul 2021Editorial Decision: Revise Minor
09 Sep 20213rd Revision Received
09 Sep 2021Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
13 Sep 2021Editorial Decision: Accept