TY  - JOUR
A1  - Uhl, Britta
A1  - Wölfling, Mirko
A1  - Fiedler, Konrad
T1  - Exploring the power of moth samples to reveal community patterns along shallow ecological gradients
T2  - Ecological entomology
N2  - 1. Analysing the effects of environmental variation on species assemblages is a key topic in community ecology. However, the outcome may strongly depend on the focal species group. Moths have often been used as the target in ecological studies due to their fast response to environmental change. Yet, some moth subgroups might be more sensitive than others to reflect environmental differences, depending on their functional and physiological characteristics.
2. We investigated which moth subsets are especially suitable to mirror responses to subtle variation in vegetation. We analysed the susceptibility of different subsets to local weather conditions and inter-annual fluctuations. Finally, we checked for the importance of including abundance information. We analysed moth communities (392 species, 23.870 individuals) at 60 sites within two Mediterranean forest reserves and investigated relationships between community composition and environment of (1) all moths (with and without taking abundances into account), and of subsets comprising only (2) small-sized species, (3) host-plant specialists, (4) moss, lichen and detritus feeding species, (5) ‘microlepidoptera’, (6) ‘macro-moths’ and (7) random subsets of 50, 100 and 200 species.
3. Incidence data performed similarly to abundance data in matrix regression models. Host plant specialists responded especially sensitive to small-scaled variation in vegetation composition. Macro-moth samples in contrast were highly prone to local weather conditions and to inter-annual abundance fluctuations. Accordingly, a focus on host-specialists and micro-moths is the best way to analyse relationships between shallow environmental gradients and insect communities.
KW  - community composition
KW  - differentiation diversity
KW  - environmental gradients
KW  - moth indicator groups
KW  - stochastic factors
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/75344
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-753448
SN  - 1365-2311
N1  - Open access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. We also like to thank Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Berlin, and the University of Vienna, Faculty of Life Sciences, for financial support.
VL  - 47
IS  - 3
SP  - 371
EP  - 381
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Oxford [u.a.]
ER  -