2025/05/29 by Diana M. Méndez‐Rojas, Federico Escobar, Carlos Cultid‐Medina · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Insect-Plant Interactions and Control #Insect and Pesticide Research #Insect Pest Control Strategies
paper · doi:10.1111/1365-2664.70078
Abstract Trait‐based approaches are becoming increasingly important in understanding the functional structure of biological communities in response to anthropogenic disturbances. Coffee is one of the most important crops in tropical regions and has gone through a process of agricultural intensification at a landscape scale that could cause the loss of species and functional diversity at a local scale. Rove beetles are diverse in Andean coffee crops and are an ideal group for evaluating the impact of the environmental heterogeneity at local and landscape scale on the functional structure of their community through identifying trait syndromes. Using a trait‐based approach with RLQ analysis, five life‐history traits of rove beetle species were studied from 27 sites in a region dominated by sun‐grown coffee in the Colombian Andes. We evaluated how environmental heterogeneity at local and landscape levels affects the functional structure of the rove beetle community, identifying groups of species with shared common traits. We found that both local and landscape variables play a crucial role in shaping the functional structure of the rove beetle community. Despite the dominance of predators and the small body size of beetle species as an indicator of the transformation processes (i.e. forest conversion to crops) that have undergone the studied coffee landscape, four trait syndromes were identified in sun‐grown coffee crops. Large and small predators, small specialist predators, medium saprophagous organisms and medium parasitoids were identified in coffee crops, supporting the idea that the high environmental heterogeneity promotes different trait syndromes in coffee crops. Synthesis and applications . Our study suggests that high environmental heterogeneity at local (small size of coffee farms) and landscape level (number of forest patches) promotes the functional structure in rove beetle communities. We discussed how trait‐based and RLQ analysis is a useful approach to evaluate the landscape simplification effect on functional diversity in tropical regions, especially with groups of highly speciose and taxonomically poorly known insects.