PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #79: Conservation Ecology: Biodiversity Case Studies and Models. Presiding: T. Rooney.
Friday, August 10, 2001. 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Hall of Ideas J.
Cross-taxonomic patterns of biological diversity in riparian ecosystems: implications for conservation.
Manley, Patricia1, 1
ABSTRACT- The search for ecological surrogates continues to be an area of applied research as the establishment of conservation strategies burgeons and the need for effective environmental monitoring to validate these strategies grows. Several multi-species surrogates for diversity have been proposed, consisting primarily of the richness of taxa within a given class or order. I investigated patterns of alpha and beta diversity in riparian areas across five taxonomic groups (birds, mammals, invertebrates, vascular plants, fungi) to test the hypothesis that one taxonomic group and one measure of diversity could serve as a surrogate for biodiversity. Environmental relationships of alpha and beta diversity varied within and among taxonomic groups. However, some parallels were observed between taxonomic groups. Bird species richness was positively correlated with invertebrate family richness and negatively correlated with plant species and fungi genera richness. Mammal and plant species richness were positively correlated, and they had similar patterns of beta diversity along the eight environmental gradients analyzed. The proportion all taxa in a group present at any given site ranged from 13% to 35%, indicating that beta diversity was a significant contributor to the area's diversity. Results suggest that the diversity of a single taxonomic group is unlikely to serve as an informative surrogate for the biodiversity of an area, and that richness alone may be a weak indicator of overall diversity.
KEY WORDS: alpha diversity, beta diversity, ecological surrogate, riparian