Inter-annual monitoring improves diversity estimation of tropical butterfly assemblages
Monitoring programs for diverse tropical butterfly assemblages are scarce, and temporal diversity patterns in these assemblages are poorly understood. We adopted an additive partitioning approach to determine how temporal butterfly species richness was structured at the levels of days, months, and years in five tropical/subtropical sites across three continents covering up to 9 years of monitoring. We found that observed butterfly richness was not uniformly distributed across temporal extents. Butterfly species composition differed across months and years, potentially accounting for the fact that temporal butterfly species richness contributed a high proportion to total species richness. We further examined how species richness of common and uncommon species (> and <0.5% of total abundance, respectively) were structured across temporal extents. The results showed that the common species relative contribution to total species richness was higher at lower‐temporal levels, whereas uncommon species contributed more at higher‐temporal resolutions. This suggests that long‐term sampling will be more effective in capturing patterns of rare species and the total species pool while lower‐temporal level sampling (e.g., daily or weekly) may be more useful in examining common species demographic patterns. We therefore encourage careful consideration of temporal replication at different extents in developing butterfly monitoring schemes. Long‐term monitoring is essential for improvement in the resolution of species estimation and diversity patterns for tropical ecosystems.
熱帶蝴蝶群聚的監測計劃很少,而目前對蝴蝶多樣性的時間格局所知甚微。我們採用了長達九年,於三大洲的五個熱帶/亞熱帶地區的監測數據,用加性劃分量化日,月和年對構成蝴蝶物種多樣性結構的重要性。我們發現觀察到的蝴蝶多樣性並不是在時間範圍平均分佈的。蝴蝶物種的組成在不同的月和年有明顯差異,並很有可能是構成蝴蝶多樣性的主要時間尺度。我們進一步研究常見和不常見蝴蝶(分別為>和<0.5%的總蝴蝶數量)在不同時間尺度下如何構成物種多樣性結構。結果表明常見物種的採樣在較低的時間尺度比較有效,而不常見物種的採樣在較高時間尺度比較有效。這表明長期採樣可更有效地發現較稀有物種和估計物種多樣性,而較低時間尺度的採樣(例如每日或每週)可能更有用於監查常見物種和其種群格局。因此,我們認為在設計蝴蝶監測方案時,需考慮如何分配不同時間尺度的採樣, 而長期監測有助進一步估算和了解熱帶地區的物種多樣性。
Abstract in English and Chinese; article only in English.
