Vegetation structure and climate shape mountain arthropod distributions across trophic levels

Authors:
Open Access
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Arthropods play a vital role in ecosystems; yet, their distributions remain poorly understood, particularly in mountainous regions. This study delves into the modelling of the distribution of 31 foliar arthropod genera in the French Alps, using a comprehensive approach encompassing multi‐trophic sampling, community DNA metabarcoding and random forest models. The results underscore the significant importance of vegetation structure, such as herbaceous vegetation density, and forest density and heterogeneity, along with climate, in shaping the distributions of most arthropods. These responses to environmental gradients are consistent across trophic groups, with the exception of nectarivores, whose distributions are more sensitive to landscape structure and water availability. By leveraging community DNA metabarcoding, this study sheds light on the understudied drivers of arthropod distributions, emphasizing the importance of modelling across diverse trophic groups to anticipate arthropod responses to global change.
Funding Information
  • Agence Nationale de la Recherche (GlobNets ANR‐16‐CE02‐0009, Montane OSUG@2020: ANR‐10‐LAB‐56, Trajectories ANR‐15‐IDEX‐02)
  • Office Français de la Biodiversité

This publication has 77 references indexed in Scilit: