Asynchrony in terrestrial insect abundance corresponds with species traits

• Published in: Ecology and evolution 2024-02, Vol.14 (2), p.e10910-n/a
• Main Authors: Powell, Kathryn E., Oliver, Tom H., González‐Suárez, Manuela, Botham, Marc S., Harrower, Colin A., Comont, Richard F., Middlebrook, Ian, Roy, David B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abundance; asynchrony; Biodiversity Ecology; Body mass; Bombus; Bumblebees; Butterflies & moths; Community Ecology; Datasets; Ecosystem stability; Entomology; Environmental changes; Environmental conditions; Environmental effects; Exposure; functional traits; Habitat utilization; Habitats; Insects; Lepidoptera; Life history; Niche overlap; Phylogeny; Physiology; Population dynamics; Sensitivity; Species; stability; trait diversity
• ISSN: 2045-7758; 2045-7758
• DOI: 10.1002/ece3.10910

Asynchrony in population abundance can buffer the effects of environmental change leading to greater community and ecosystem stability. Both environmental (abiotic) drivers and species functional (biotic) traits can influence population dynamics leading to asynchrony. However, empirical evidence linking dissimilarity in species traits to abundance asynchrony is limited, especially for understudied taxa such as insects. To fill this knowledge gap, we explored the relationship between pairwise species trait dissimilarity and asynchrony in interannual abundance change between pairs of species for 422 moth, butterfly, and bumblebee species in Great Britain. We also explored patterns differentiating traits that we assumed to capture ‘sensitivity to environmental variables’ (such as body mass), and traits that may reflect ‘diversity in exposure’ to environmental conditions and lead to niche partitioning (for example, habitat uses, and intra‐annual emergence periods). As expected, species trait dissimilarity calculated overall and for many individual traits representing response and exposure was positively correlated with asynchrony in all three insect groups. We found that ‘exposure’ traits, especially those relating to the phenology of species, had the strongest relationship with abundance asynchrony from all tested traits. Positive relationships were not simply due to shared evolutionary history leading to similar life‐history strategies: detected effects remained significant for most traits after accounting for phylogenetic relationships within models. Our results provide empirical support that dissimilarity in traits linked to species exposure and sensitivity to the environment could be important for temporal dissimilarity in insect abundance. Hence, we suggest that general trait diversity, but especially diversity in ‘exposure’ traits, could play a significant role in the resilience of insect communities to short‐term environmental perturbations through driving asynchrony between species abundances. Using data from long‐term monitoring scheme data and novel trait data, we explore the relationship between species trait dissimilarity and their population asynchrony amongst macro‐moths, butterflies and bumblebees. We find that differences in certain traits that correspond with species' exposure to environmental variables, especially phenology‐related traits such as flight period, particularly correlate with population asynchrony between species, giving us furt