Scale analysis of carabids richness (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in southern South America

MUÑOZ-ESCOBAR, CHRISTIAN; ROIG-JUÑENT, SERGIO ALBERTO; CARRARA, RODOLFO; JEREZ, VIVIANE

GAYANA (CONCEPCIóN)

EDICIONES UNIV

Lugar: Concepción; Año: 2015 vol. 79 p. 167 - 172

0717-652X

The southern South America presents a complex history of geomorphological and climatic events, which have modulated andfragmented the southwestern part of the Andes mostly. Given the complexity of the southern landscape, the analysis of thehierarchical components alpha-α, beta-β and gamma-γ on carabid diversity allows exploring the responses of species to spatialchanges patterns according to the scales of the landscape. In order to understand how spatial scales infl uence the carabid diversityin southern South America, we used an approach at multiple spatial scales of multiplicative diversity partitioning. We includedfour spatial scales in our analysis: among 0.25° quadrats, 0.5° quadrats, provinces and biogeographic sub-regions. The resultsshowed that the pattern of carabid distribution is not random, and varies according to the spatial scale. At larger scales β-diversitiesare observed to be higher than expected, but lower than expected at smaller scales. This suggests that carabid ensembles aremore homogenous than expected, particularly at the scale of 0.5° quadrats. As explanatory factors, glacial/post-glacial eventsand historical processes may have had an impact on the present species patterns. Furthermore, due to the importance of beta-βdiversity on local and regional scales, a promising approach for future studies is to investigate which biogeographic mechanismsseem to determine the species distribution in different provinces