Environmental DNA from archived leaves reveals widespread temporal turnover and biotic homogenization in forest arthropod communities
- University of Trier, Germany
- German Federal Environment Agency, Germany
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Germany
- Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany
Abstract
A major limitation of current reports on insect declines is the lack of standardized, long-term, and taxonomically broad time series. Here, we demonstrate the utility of environmental DNA from archived leaf material to characterize plant-associated arthropod communities. We base our work on several multi-decadal leaf time series from tree canopies in four land use types, which were sampled as part of a long-term environmental monitoring program across Germany. Using these highly standardized and well-preserved samples, we analyze temporal changes in communities of several thousand arthropod species belonging to 23 orders using metabarcoding and quantitative PCR. Our data do not support widespread declines of α-diversity or genetic variation within sites. Instead, we find a gradual community turnover, which results in temporal and spatial biotic homogenization, across all land use types and all arthropod orders. Our results suggest that insect decline is more complex than mere α-diversity loss, but can be driven by β-diversity decay across space and time.
Data availability
All raw reads are available in the Dryad Digital Repository (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x0k6djhmp).The OTU table with metadata and qPCR resullts has been uploaded as Supplementary Material
-
eDNA from archived leaves reveals no losses of α-diversity, but widespread community turnover and biotic homogenization as drivers of forest insect declineDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.x0k6djhmp.
Article and author information
Author details
Henrik Krehenwinkel
Funding
No external funding was received for this work.
Reviewing Editor
- Simon Creer
Version history
- Received: March 10, 2022
- Preprint posted: April 29, 2022 (view preprint)
- Accepted: November 6, 2022
- Accepted Manuscript published: November 10, 2022 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: December 20, 2022 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2022, Krehenwinkel et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,899
- views
-
- 297
- downloads
-
- 8
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Environmental DNA from archived leaves reveals widespread temporal turnover and biotic homogenization in forest arthropod communities
eLife 11:e78521.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78521
Further reading
-
- Ecology
Over two decades ago, an intercropping strategy was developed that received critical acclaim for synergizing food security with ecosystem resilience in smallholder farming. The push–pull strategy reportedly suppresses lepidopteran pests in maize through a combination of a repellent intercrop (push), commonly Desmodium spp., and an attractive, border crop (pull). Key in the system is the intercrop’s constitutive release of volatile terpenoids that repel herbivores. However, the earlier described volatile terpenoids were not detectable in the headspace of Desmodium, and only minimally upon herbivory. This was independent of soil type, microbiome composition, and whether collections were made in the laboratory or in the field. Furthermore, in oviposition choice tests in a wind tunnel, maize with or without an odor background of Desmodium was equally attractive for the invasive pest Spodoptera frugiperda. In search of an alternative mechanism, we found that neonate larvae strongly preferred Desmodium over maize. However, their development stagnated and no larva survived. In addition, older larvae were frequently seen impaled and immobilized by the dense network of silica-fortified, non-glandular trichomes. Thus, our data suggest that Desmodium may act through intercepting and decimating dispersing larval offspring rather than adult deterrence. As a hallmark of sustainable pest control, maize–Desmodium push–pull intercropping has inspired countless efforts to emulate stimulo-deterrent diversion in other cropping systems. However, detailed knowledge of the actual mechanisms is required to rationally improve the strategy, and translate the concept to other cropping systems.
-
- Ecology
The bacterium responsible for a disease that infects citrus plants across Asia facilitates its own proliferation by increasing the fecundity of its host insect.
