exploring patterns of darkling beetle distributions in the genus eleodes

Exploring patterns of darkling beetle distributions in the genus Eleodes

(Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

M. Andrew [email protected] Gilbert

[email protected]@MAndrewJohnstonhttp://slideshare.net/MAndrewJ/patterns-of-distribution

As a grad student studying systematics, are biodiversity data/informatics useful for

me?


me?

Well – what data are available for my taxon of

study?

Eleodes Eschscholtz(Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

• ~200 valid species• ~450 available

names• Western North

American distribution

• Often considered difficult to identify 5 sympatric species in

SE Arizona, to scale

E. madrensis Johnston

E. anthracinus Blaisdell

E. subnitens LeConte

E. nitidus Casey

E. longicollis LeConte

Eleodes Eschscholtz(Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

• Larvae live in the soil

• Adults are wingless• Omnivorous

scavengers• No known specific

associations with plants

E. carbonarius (Say)

E. caudiferus LeConte

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

36,317 Preserved Specimens


Searching all fields for “Eleodes”


All had “Eleodes” present in at least ‘Genus’ or ‘ScientificName’ fields

589 Scientific Names





54 Families





54 Families

4 Kingdoms




Should we trust the ‘Genus’ and ‘Species’

fields?Or the ‘ScientificName’

field?

54 Families

4 Kingdoms





There are no ‘identifiedBy’ data with any of these

records…

54 Families

4 Kingdoms



Share a composite backbone taxonomy,

confusing Eleodes with:

Aleiodes (Hymenoptera)Elodes (Coleoptera)Leiodes (Coleoptera)Galeodes (Solifugae)


Conflicting, un-sourced taxonomic information make

these data untrustworthy.



All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field


Eleodes Occurrence Data44,082 Preserved Specimens



1 Family (Tenebrionidae)




1 Genus (Eleodes)

1 Family (Tenebrionidae)





1 Genus (Eleodes)

1 Family (Tenebrionidae)We can be

reasonably confident someone determined these specimens to the genus Eleodes





1 Genus (Eleodes)

1 Family (Tenebrionidae)23,821

“identifiedBy” attributed to a

person


What can these data tell us about distributions of

species?

CORRELATION*

Analyzes digitized herbarium data from SEINet

*Landrum, L.R. and D. Lafferty. 2015. Taxon 64(5) 998-1016 http://dx.doi.org/10.12705/645.9

CORRELATION*


Computes how frequently each species is found near each other given species

CORRELATION*


Clusters species into co-occurring groups

CORRELATION

*Brown, D.E. (ed.) 1994. Biotic communities: Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Arizona Flora Test Case:• Examined 81 ‘high

profile’ species• Recovered groupings

highly congruent with published biotic communities*

CORRELATIONAnalyze input set of lat/long coordinates:• Correlate an animal

species with SEINet plants

• Place that animal in a plant-driven biotic community

Using CORRELATION, we can ask questions about ecological communities

And answer them based on specimen occurrence data

Where can we find a certain species?

“You can find it in oak-juniper

forests in southern Arizona”

Eleodes madrensis Johnston, 2015

Where can we find a certain species?Eleodes madrensis Johnston, 2015

5 highest correlated plant

species

“You can find it in oak-juniper forests in

southern Arizona”

Differentiate habitats of similar speciesEleodes arcuatus Casey, 1884Eleodes debilis Horn, 1870

Differentiate habitats of similar speciesEleodes arcuatus Casey, 1884Eleodes debilis Horn, 1870

Only share a single species of top 10

Differentiate habitats of similar speciesEleodes arcuatus Casey, 1884

Eleodes arcuatus is correlated with oak-

juniper mid-elevation transition forest

Differentiate habitats of similar speciesEleodes debilis Horn, 1870

Eleodes debilis is correlated with

riparian broadleaf plants from a

similar elevation

CORRELATION transforms our approach to understanding distribution

Ecological Community

“Authoritative observation” Repeatable, specimen-based correlation

Ecological Community

“Authoritative observation” Repeatable, specimen-based correlation

Spatial DistributionGeographic polygons Specimen-driven, co-occurring

species communities

CORRELATION transforms our approach to understanding distribution

Can we infer ancestor-descendant plant-community shifts?

Historical plant-community inference

• 21 Eleodes species from Arizona were selected– Records with high geographic uncertainty or

missing locality data were removed

– Records were sorted to taxa by ‘ScientificName’ based on nomenclatural synonymies


• 21 Eleodes species from Arizona were selected

• Associated beetles with plant communities using CORRELATION

– Beetle species associated with 6 different plant communities

– 18 species were correlated to a single plant community, 3 were equally correlated to 2 communities


• 21 Eleodes species from Arizona were selected• Associated beetles with plant communities

using CORRELATION• ‘Biogeographic’ reconstruction in

BioGeoBEARS

– Inferred historical plant-community lineage associations

– Assumed current plant communities existed throughout Eleodes evolutionary history


Colors represent six

different biotic communities

Phylogeny based on a 7-gene unpublished dataset, Smith et al. in

prep


Two independent

radiations into the Sonoran

Desert community


prep


‘Melaneleodes Clade’ ancestors associated with

Pine-Juniper community of the Colorado

Plateau


prep


Ancestral lineage associated with higher elevation oak-juniper and ponderosa pine

communities


prep

• Novel analysis for inferring historical habitat transitions

• Entirely based on vouchered specimen data

• Analyses are reproducible and easily re-done when new data are made available


• Expand range to all North American Eleodes species and plant communities

• Incorporate fossil data to constrain historically available plant communities

Future directions

• Expand range to all of North American species and biotic communities

• Incorporate fossil data to constrain historically available plant communities

Future directions

See more community-created tools to analyze

specimen data


me?

YES! (mostly)• There are large amounts of data

available• Current state of higher-level

aggregation may be problematic for narrowly-focused projects

• We can learn more about the biology and evolution of our groups

Special thanks to:ASU Herbarium:Les LandrumDarryl LaffertyLiz MakingsWalt Fertig

Lab members:Nico FranzGuanyang ZhangSangmi LeeSal AnzaldoAndrew JansenBrian Riley

Data Entry:Chris HennyAndrew GalvanColin McMartinDylan Cooper

Collaborators:Aaron SmithKojun Kanda

Funding:

NSF ARTS DEB-1258154

2016 Evolutionary Biology Summer Research Fellowship

Data, Analyses, Scripts: http://github.com/mandrewj/

exploring patterns of darkling beetle distributions in the genus eleodes

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