Ciencia habilitada por datos de especímenes

Shirey, V., and J. Rabinovich. 2024. Climate change-induced degradation of expert range maps drawn for kissing bugs (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) and long-standing current and future sampling gaps across the Americas. Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz 119. https://doi.org/10.1590/0074-02760230100

BACKGROUND Kissing bugs are the vectors of Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease (CD). Despite their epidemiological relevance, kissing bug species are under sampled in terms of their diversity and it is unclear what biases exist in available kissing bug data. Under climate change, range maps for kissing bugs may become less accurate as species shift their ranges to track climatic tolerance. OBJECTIVES Quantify inventory completeness in available kissing bug data. Assess how well range maps are at conveying information about current distributions and potential future distributions subject to shift under climate change. Intersect forecasted changes in kissing bug distributions with contemporary sampling gaps to identify regions for future sampling of the group. Identify whether a phylogenetic signal is present in expert range knowledge as more closely related species may be similarly well or lesser understood. METHODS We used species distribution models (SDM), specifically constructed from Bayesian additive regression trees, with Bioclim variables, to forecast kissing bug distributions into 2100 and intersect these with current sampling gaps to identify priority regions for sampling. Expert range maps were assessed by the agreement between the expert map and SDM generated occurrence probability. We used classical hypothesis testing methods as well as tests of phylogenetic signal to meet our objectives. FINDINGS Expert range maps vary in their quality of depicting current kissing bug distributions. Most expert range maps decline in their ability to convey information about kissing bug occurrence over time, especially in under sampled areas. We found limited evidence for a phylogenetic signal in expert range map performance. MAIN CONCLUSIONS Expert range maps are not a perfect account of species distributions and may degrade in their ability to accurately convey distribution knowledge under future climates. We identify regions where future sampling of kissing bugs will be crucial for completing biodiversity inventories.

Li, Y., Y. Wang, and X. Liu. 2024. Half of global islands have reached critical area thresholds for undergoing rapid increases in biological invasions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 291. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.0844

Biological invasions are among the threats to global biodiversity and social sustainability, especially on islands. Identifying the threshold of area at which non-native species begin to increase abruptly is crucial for early prevention strategies. The small-island effect (SIE) was proposed to quantify the nonlinear relationship between native species richness and area but has not yet been applied to non-native species and thus to predict the key breakpoints at which established non-native species start to increase rapidly. Based on an extensive global dataset, including 769 species of non-native birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles established on 4277 islands across 54 archipelagos, we detected a high prevalence of SIEs across 66.7% of archipelagos. Approximately 50% of islands have reached the threshold area and thus may be undergoing a rapid increase in biological invasions. SIEs were more likely to occur in those archipelagos with more non-native species introduction events, more established historical non-native species, lower habitat diversity and larger archipelago area range. Our findings may have important implications not only for targeted surveillance of biological invasions on global islands but also for predicting the responses of both non-native and native species to ongoing habitat fragmentation under sustained land-use modification and climate change.

Lopez-Collado, J., J. Jacinto-Padilla, O. Rodríguez-Aguilar, and J. V. Hidalgo-Contreras. 2024. Bioclimatic similarity between species locations and their environment revealed by dimensionality reduction analysis. Ecological Informatics 79: 102444. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2023.102444

Species distribution modeling is an active research topic with applications in conservation management, pest risk assessment, and population ecology. Several machine-learning methods have been applied to estimate species distribution. Non-linear dimensionality reduction techniques aim to preserve the similarity among objects at a reduced dimension for visualization, clustering, and feature selection. We propose a framework that uses Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP) to analyze bioclimatic variables associated with environmental (background) and species samples. Our objective was to identify geographic areas similar to those inhabited by the species. We hypothesize that the similarity between species locations and their environment in the reduced dimension will reflect similarity in the multivariate bioclimatic space. We estimated the probability of background points near a species point utilizing the latent nearest neighbor distance distribution. We tested this procedure with ten insect pest species of global importance and found that UMAP was able to generate a gradient of similarity between geographic areas and species occurrence. We also found that background-species latent distance tends to have a convergent non-linear relationship with the mean value of bioclimatic variables, thus supporting our key assumption. The performance of UMAP as a binary classifier and comparison with MaxEnt supports its use in modeling of species distribution. Potential applications are discussed for multi-species and multi-scenario analysis, as well as projection to new regions.

Huber, B. A., G. Meng, J. Král, I. M. Ávila Herrera, M. A. Izquierdo, and L. S. Carvalho. 2023. High and dry: integrative taxonomy of the Andean spider genus Nerudia (Araneae: Pholcidae). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac100

Abstract Ninetinae are a group of poorly known spiders that do not fit the image of ‘daddy long-legs spiders’ (Pholcidae), the family to which they belong. They are mostly short-legged, tiny and live in arid environments. The previously monotypic Andean genus Nerudia exemplifies our poor knowledge of Ninetinae: only seven adult specimens from two localities in Chile and Argentina have been reported in the literature. We found representatives of Nerudia at 24 of 52 localities visited in 2019, mostly under rocks in arid habitats, up to 4450 m a.s.l., the highest known record for Pholcidae. With now more than 400 adult specimens, we revise the genus, describing ten new species based on morphology (including SEM) and COI barcodes. We present the first karyotype data for Nerudia and for its putative sister-genus Gertschiola. These two southern South American genera share a X1X2X3Y sex chromosome system. We model the distribution of Nerudia, showing that the genus is expected to occur in the Atacama biogeographic province (no record so far) and that its environmental niche is phylogenetically conserved. This is the first comprehensive revision of any Ninetinae genus. It suggests that focused collecting may uncover a considerable diversity of these enigmatic spiders.

Li, D., Z. Li, Z. Liu, Y. Yang, A. G. Khoso, L. Wang, and D. Liu. 2022. Climate change simulations revealed potentially drastic shifts in insect community structure and crop yields in China’s farmland. Journal of Pest Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10340-022-01479-3

Climate change will cause drastic fluctuations in agricultural ecosystems, which in turn may affect global food security. We used ecological niche modeling to predict the potential distribution for four cereal aphids (i.e., Sitobion avenae, Rhopalosiphum padi, Schizaphis graminum, and Diurphis noxia…

Li, X., B. Li, G. Wang, X. Zhan, and M. Holyoak. 2020. Deeply digging the interaction effect in multiple linear regressions using a fractional-power interaction term. MethodsX 7: 101067. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2020.101067

In multiple regression Y ~ β0 + β1X1 + β2X2 + β3X1 X2 + ɛ., the interaction term is quantified as the product of X1 and X2. We developed fractional-power interaction regression (FPIR), using βX1M X2N as the interaction term. The rationale of FPIR is that the slopes of Y-X1 regression along the X2 gr…