TY  - JOUR
A1  - Peters, Marcell K.
A1  - Hemp, Andreas
A1  - Appelhans, Tim
A1  - Behler, Christina
A1  - Classen, Alice
A1  - Detsch, Florian
A1  - Ensslin, Andreas
A1  - Ferger, Stefan W.
A1  - Frederiksen, Sara B.
A1  - Gebert, Frederike
A1  - Haas, Michael
A1  - Helbig-Bonitz, Maria
A1  - Hemp, Claudia
A1  - Kindeketa, William J.
A1  - Mwangomo, Ephraim
A1  - Ngereza, Christine
A1  - Otte, Insa
A1  - Röder, Juliane
A1  - Rutten, Gemma
A1  - Costa, David Schellenberger
A1  - Tardanico, Joseph
A1  - Zancolli, Giulia
A1  - Deckert, Jürgen
A1  - Eardley, Connal D.
A1  - Peters, Ralph S.
A1  - Rödel, Mark-Oliver
A1  - Schleuning, Matthias
A1  - Ssymank, Axel
A1  - Kakengi, Victor
A1  - Zhang, Jie
A1  - Böhning-Gaese, Katrin
A1  - Brandl, Roland
A1  - Kalko, Elisabeth K.V.
A1  - Kleyer, Michael
A1  - Nauss, Thomas
A1  - Tschapka, Marco
A1  - Fischer, Markus
A1  - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf
T1  - Predictors of elevational biodiversity gradients change from single taxa to the multi-taxa community level
JF  - Nature Communications
N2  - The factors determining gradients of biodiversity are a fundamental yet unresolved topic in ecology. While diversity gradients have been analysed for numerous single taxa, progress towards general explanatory models has been hampered by limitations in the phylogenetic coverage of past studies. By parallel sampling of 25 major plant and animal taxa along a 3.7 km elevational gradient on Mt. Kilimanjaro, we quantify cross-taxon consensus in diversity gradients and evaluate predictors of diversity from single taxa to a multi-taxa community level. While single taxa show complex distribution patterns and respond to different environmental factors, scaling up diversity to the community level leads to an unambiguous support for temperature as the main predictor of species richness in both plants and animals. Our findings illuminate the influence of taxonomic coverage for models of diversity gradients and point to the importance of temperature for diversification and species coexistence in plant and animal communities.
KW  - community ecology
KW  - macroecology
KW  - tropical ecology
KW  - biodiversity
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-169374
VL  - 7
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Thormann, Birthe
A1  - Ahrens, Dirk
A1  - Armijos, Diego Marín
A1  - Peters, Marcell K.
A1  - Wagner, Thomas
A1  - Wägele, Johann W.
T1  - Exploring the Leaf Beetle Fauna (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) of an Ecuadorian Mountain Forest Using DNA Barcoding
JF  - PLoS ONE
N2  - Background
Tropical mountain forests are hotspots of biodiversity hosting a huge but little known diversity of insects that is endangered by habitat destruction and climate change. Therefore, rapid assessment approaches of insect diversity are urgently needed to complement slower traditional taxonomic approaches. We empirically compare different DNA-based species delimitation approaches for a rapid biodiversity assessment of hyperdiverse leaf beetle assemblages along an elevational gradient in southern Ecuador and explore their effect on species richness estimates.

Methodology/Principal Findings
Based on a COI barcode data set of 674 leaf beetle specimens (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) of 266 morphospecies from three sample sites in the Podocarpus National Park, we employed statistical parsimony analysis, distance-based clustering, GMYC- and PTP-modelling to delimit species-like units and compared them to morphology-based (parataxonomic) species identifications. The four different approaches for DNA-based species delimitation revealed highly similar numbers of molecular operational taxonomic units (MOTUs) (n = 284–289). Estimated total species richness was considerably higher than the sampled amount, 414 for morphospecies (Chao2) and 469–481 for the different MOTU types. Assemblages at different elevational levels (1000 vs. 2000 m) had similar species numbers but a very distinct species composition for all delimitation methods. Most species were found only at one elevation while this turnover pattern was even more pronounced for DNA-based delimitation.

Conclusions/Significance
Given the high congruence of DNA-based delimitation results, probably due to the sampling structure, our study suggests that when applied to species communities on a regionally limited level with high amount of rare species (i.e. ~50% singletons), the choice of species delimitation method can be of minor relevance for assessing species numbers and turnover in tropical insect communities. Therefore, DNA-based species delimitation is confirmed as a valuable tool for evaluating biodiversity of hyperdiverse insect communities, especially when exact taxonomic identifications are missing.
KW  - leaf beetle
KW  - Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae
KW  - Podocarpus National Park
KW  - DNA-based species delimitation
KW  - biodiversity
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-167253
VL  - 11
IS  - 2
ER  -