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When the Ice Has Gone: Colonisation of Equatorial Glacier Forelands by Ground Beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

  • Ecology, Behavior and Bionomics
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Abstract

Ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) are among the early colonisers of recently deglaciated terrains. While patterns of carabid colonisation along forelands of retreating glaciers have been thoroughly investigated in temperate climates, information remains scarce in tropical mountains. This study aimed to describe for the first time the carabid beetle species assemblages along the chronosequence of two tropical Andean glaciers (Antisana and Carihuairazo, Ecuador). Shannon index, taxonomic distinctness and species assemblage composition did not reveal deterministic and directional patterns. Only the principal coordinate analysis performed on the Antisana dataset showed that some species had a clear preference for terrains deglaciated for more than 200 years. Our results showed that equatorial glacier forelands are colonised by pioneer species that persist from the recently deglaciated terrains (less than 25 years) to terrains deglaciated since more than 200 years. This pattern fits the ‘addition and persistence model’ of high-latitude glacier forelands, rather than the ‘species replacement model’ of the Alps. The pioneer species observed are high-altitude specialists adapted to constantly cold environments, but not specifically ice-related. In the current context of climate warming, pioneer and cold-adapted species living near the glaciers of equatorial mountains are therefore only threatened by the ‘summit trap’ risk, unlike in temperate regions, as they are not strictly linked to the glacier microclimate.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks are due to Washington Pruna, Saúl Aguirre and Verónica Crespo for their help during the field work; to Ricardo Jaramillo and Priscilla Muriel for the funding, logistic, administrative and data management support on the Antisana plot; and to Antoine Rabatel for his expert advice on moraine chronology. The Ecuadorian Ministerio de Ambiente provided research and collection permits numbers 005-12-IC-FAU-DNB/MA, 003-15-IC-FAU-DNB/MA, 005-14-IC-FAU-DNB/MA and 005-15-IC-FAU-DNB/MA. Part of the glaciological data were provided by the Service National d’Observation GLACIOCLIM (http://glacioclim.osug.fr/) funded by CNRS-INSU, IRD and Univ. Grenoble Alpes and the International Joint Laboratory GREAT ICE (IRD, EPN-Quito).

Funding

This study is part of the SUMMITEX project funded by the CNRS (PICS-06724, 2015–2017 and MSHS-T USR 3414), the INSPYRAND project funded by the CNRS (PEPS 2016, INSHS and Réseau National des MSH) and two PUCE projects (2016–2017): Efecto del rápido retroceso glaciar sobre la biodiversidad en ecosistemas tropicales de altura, code M13434, and Monitoring Climate Change Impact on the High Andes (MICCAA), code N13419.

Mauro Gobbi’s field trip was co-funded by CNRS and Autonomous Province of Trento (Italy), and supported by Club Alpino Italiano and GM Calze srl.

The field trip was also funded by grants from Secretaría de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (SENESCYT, Arca de Noé Initiative; S. R. Ron and O. Torres-Carvajal Principal Investigators).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire TRACES UMR5608, CNRS – Université de Toulouse, 31000, Toulouse, France

    P. Moret

  2. Museo QCAZ - Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador

    Á. Barragán & E. Moreno

  3. Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIBYNE), CONICET – Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    E. Moreno

  4. IRSTEA, UR RIVERLY, Centre de Lyon-Villeurbanne, Villeurbanne Cedex, France

    S. Cauvy-Fraunié

  5. Section of Invertebrate Zoology and Hydrobiology, MUSE-Science Museum, Corso del Lavoro e della Scienza 3, Trento, Italy

    M. Gobbi

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  1. P. Moret
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  2. Á. Barragán
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  3. E. Moreno
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  4. S. Cauvy-Fraunié
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Contributions

MG, PM and AB contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by AB, EM, MG and PM. Analyses were performed by MG and SCF. The first draft of the manuscript was written by MG and PM and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to M. Gobbi.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 Analysis of Similarity (ANOSIM) based on Bray–Curtis index performed to test the significance of the similarities, and to evaluate the degree of separation, between species assemblages collected along the Antisana chronosequence.
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Table 5 PCoA scores related to the PCoA ordination plots of carabid species with environmental variables (altitude and vegetation cover) along the Antisana glacier foreland chronosequence.
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Table 6 Analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) based on Bray–Curtis index performed to test the significance of the similarities, and to evaluate the degree of separation, between species assemblages collected along the Carihuairazo chronosequence
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Table 7 PCoA scores related to the PCoA ordination plots of carabid species with environmental variables (altitude and vegetation cover) along the Carihuairazo glacier foreland chronosequence.
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Moret, P., Barragán, Á., Moreno, E. et al. When the Ice Has Gone: Colonisation of Equatorial Glacier Forelands by Ground Beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae). Neotrop Entomol 49, 213–226 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-019-00753-x

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