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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
agricultural and biological sciences
Extensive regional variation in the phenology of insects and their response to temperature across North America
Ecology, Volume 104, No. 5, Article e4036, Year 2023
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Description
Climate change models often assume similar responses to temperatures across the range of a species, but local adaptation or phenotypic plasticity can lead plants and animals to respond differently to temperature in different parts of their range. To date, there have been few tests of this assumption at the scale of continents, so it is unclear if this is a large-scale problem. Here, we examined the assumption that insect taxa show similar responses to temperature at 96 sites in grassy habitats across North America. We sampled insects with Malaise traps during 2019–2021 (N = 1041 samples) and examined the biomass of insects in relation to temperature and time of season. Our samples mostly contained Diptera (33%), Lepidoptera (19%), Hymenoptera (18%), and Coleoptera (10%). We found strong regional differences in the phenology of insects and their response to temperature, even within the same taxonomic group, habitat type, and time of season. For example, the biomass of nematoceran flies increased across the season in the central part of the continent, but it only showed a small increase in the Northeast and a seasonal decline in the Southeast and West. At a smaller scale, insect biomass at different traps operating on the same days was correlated up to ~75 km apart. Large-scale geographic and phenological variation in insect biomass and abundance has not been studied well, and it is a major source of controversy in previous analyses of insect declines that have aggregated studies from different locations and time periods. Our study illustrates that large-scale predictions about changes in insect populations, and their causes, will need to incorporate regional and taxonomic differences in the response to temperature. © 2023 The Authors. Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.
Authors & Co-Authors
Gandhi, Kamal J.K.
United States, Athens
University of Georgia
Imlay, Tara
Canada, Gatineau
Environment and Climate Change Canada
Canada, Halifax
Dalhousie University
Inouye, David William
United States, Crested Butte
Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory
United States, College Park
University of Maryland, College Park
Jacobson, Andrew P.
United States, Salisbury
Catawba College
Kautz, Andrea R.
United States, Pittsburgh
Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh
Komatsu, Kimberly J.
United States, Edgewater
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Lévesque-Beaudin, Valérie
Canada, Guelph
University of Guelph
Morrissey, Christy A.
Canada, Saskatoon
University of Saskatchewan
Pearse, Ian S.
United States, Reston
United States Geological Survey
Pelletier, Fanie
Canada, Sherbrooke
Université de Sherbrooke
Ryan, Sadie J.
United States, Gainesville
University of Florida
Schoepf, Ivana
Canada, Kingston
Queen’s University
Canada, Camrose
The University of Alberta Augustana Campus
Sikes, Derek S.
United States, Fairbanks
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Stanback, Mark T.
United States, Davidson
Davidson College
Statistics
Citations: 6
Authors: 14
Affiliations: 45
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1002/ecy.4036
ISSN:
00129658
Research Areas
Environmental