Human disturbance now occurs at both global and local scales, which can no longer be ignored when considering island biogeography and other ecological processes. DrsAki Nakamura and Masatoshi Katabuchi of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) and their colleagues at the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Australia, conducted a study to investigate the role of human disturbance in island biogeography of arthropods (insects and spiders) plants across islands. The study took place in Capricornia Cays (part of the Great Barrier Reef World HeritageArea) National Park, located at the southern end of Great Barrier Reef, eastern Australia.
Using pitfall and Malaise traps and hand collecting, the researchers sampled arthropods (ants, beetles, flies, spiders and cockroaches) from 14 cays. They also carried out comprehensive survey of plants on each island. Using univariate and multivariate generalized linear models with a model averaging technique, they calculated the Akaike weights which quantified the relative importance of predictor variables in explaining variation in species richness and assemblage composition.
They found that infestation of introduced ant species, Pheidole megacephala, was one of the most important factors, which was negatively associated with the species richness of other ants, beetles and flies. The presence of frequent human visitation and resort facilities was associated with increased exotic cockroach and plant species richness. The impacts of human disturbance, however, were highly variable across different groups of arthropods and plants.
Their study demonstrated that human disturbance and proliferation of invasive species can override other biogeography processes such as habitat size and the diversity of resources. The relative importance of these factors, however, varied depending of the taxonomic groups studied.
The study entitled “The role of human disturbance in island biogeography of arthropods and plants: an information theoretic approach” has been published online in Journal of Biogeography.
Contact:
Aki Nakamura Ph.D
Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
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E-mail: a.nakamura@xtbg.ac.cn
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