Imprints of latitude, host taxon, and decay stage on fungus-associated arthropod communities
Interactions among fungi and insects involve hundreds of thousands of species. While insect communities on plants have formed some of the classic model systems in ecology, fungus-based communities and the forces structuring them remain poorly studied by comparison. We characterize the arthropod communities associated with fruiting bodies of eight mycorrhizal basidiomycete fungus species from three different orders along a 1200-km latitudinal gradient in northern Europe. We hypothesized that, matching the pattern seen for most insect taxa on plants, we would observe a general decrease in fungal-associated species with latitude. Against this backdrop, we expected local communities to be struc…
Landscape structure, habitat quality and metapopulation structure as predictors of population size of the Glanville fritillary butterfly
Spatial variation in population size is affected by many factors, which makes it hard to evaluate the appropriateness of empirical models of population sizes or range dynamics. To complicate matters further in dynamic and spatially structured populations, such as metapopulations, spatial interactions via dispersal as well as local extinctions and colonizations confound the effects of environmental factors. Additionally, while a wealth of ”coarse” environmental data are available for most terrestrial ecosystems it is difficult to know how adequate such data are for explaining abundance compared to situations where more detailed habitat and demographic data are also available. The acquisition…