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Insect dispersal ability is crucial to overcome limitations in patch colonization of Eichhornia crassipes floating meadows

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Abstract

Dispersal is a pivotal process in ecology since it determines species presence across patches in landscapes. Therefore, understanding dispersal may be critical in light of current environmental changes. Here, we conducted an experiment to evaluate how richness, density, and β-diversity of insects with strong and/or weak aquatic and aerial dispersal abilities are influenced by colonization limitation of aerial and aquatic patches of a floating macrophyte. We used nets to isolate the aquatic (by roots) and aerial (by leaves) routes by which insects may colonize floating macrophytes. We found that strong aquatic and aerial dispersers were not affected by colonization limitation, since the richness and density of these groups did not decrease with limited colonization. Conversely, limited colonization resulted in a strong decrease in the richness and density of weak aquatic and aerial dispersers. Also, the beta diversity of weak dispersers strongly increased with limited colonization, whereas strong dispersers produced more homogeneous communities (low beta diversity). Our findings illustrate that increasing habitat fragmentation and destruction should have stronger impacts on weak dispersers as they are not able to overcome the habitat scarcity. Consequently, only strong dispersers may persist, leading to high community similarity.

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to Claudia C. Bonecker for the revision of the manuscript. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001 (scholarships to R.G.R. and D.A.M.). R.P.M. and A.S.M. are thankful for the constant funds and productivity grants received from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) (projects 307587/2017-7 and 436049/2018-0 to A.S.M. and 302798/2019-6 to R.P.M.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Program in Ecology of Inland Water Ecosystems (PEA), Department of Biology (DBI), Center of Biological Sciences (CCB), State University of Maringá (UEM), Maringá, Brazil

    Raúl García-Ríos, Dieison A. Moi & Roger P. Mormul

  2. Departamento de Ecologia, IB, Universidade Federal Do Rio Grande Do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

    Adriano S. Melo

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  1. Raúl García-Ríos
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Correspondence to Raúl García-Ríos.

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García-Ríos, R., Moi, D.A., Melo, A.S. et al. Insect dispersal ability is crucial to overcome limitations in patch colonization of Eichhornia crassipes floating meadows. Limnology 23, 287–298 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-021-00688-6

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