Exploring Patterns of Darkling Beetle Distributions in the Genus Eleodes

Exploring patterns of darkling beetle distributions in the genus Eleodes

(Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

M. Andrew Johnstonajohnston@asu.eduEdward Gilbert

egbot@asu.edu@MAndrewJohnstonhttp://slideshare.net/MAndrewJ/patterns-of-distribution

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

me?

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

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

22,458 Preserved Specimens

Searching all fields for “Eleodes”

36,317 Preserved Specimens

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

589 Scientific Names

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

36,317 Preserved Specimens

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

589 Scientific Names

54 Families

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

36,317 Preserved Specimens

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

589 Scientific Names

54 Families

4 Kingdoms

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

36,317 Preserved Specimens

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

Should we trust the ‘Genus’ and ‘Species’

fields?Or the ‘ScientificName’

field?

54 Families

4 Kingdoms

589 Scientific Names

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

36,317 Preserved Specimens

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

There are no ‘identifiedBy’ data with any of these

records…

54 Families

4 Kingdoms

589 Scientific Names

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

Share a composite backbone taxonomy,

confusing Eleodes with:

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

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

Conflicting, un-sourced taxonomic information make

these data untrustworthy.

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

44,082 Preserved Specimens

All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

44,082 Preserved Specimens

All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field

678 Scientific Names

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

Eleodes Occurrence Data44,082 Preserved Specimens

All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field

678 Scientific Names

1 Family (Tenebrionidae)

44,082 Preserved Specimens

All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field

678 Scientific Names

1 Genus (Eleodes)

1 Family (Tenebrionidae)

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

44,082 Preserved Specimens

All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field

678 Scientific Names

1 Genus (Eleodes)

1 Family (Tenebrionidae)We can be

reasonably confident someone determined these specimens to the genus Eleodes

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

44,082 Preserved Specimens

All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field

678 Scientific Names

1 Genus (Eleodes)

1 Family (Tenebrionidae)23,821

“identifiedBy” attributed to a

person

Exploring Eleodes occurrence data

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*

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

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

CORRELATION*

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

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

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

Historical plant-community inference

• 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

Historical plant-community inference

• 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

Historical plant-community inference

Colors represent six

different biotic communities

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

prep

Historical plant-community inference

Two independent

radiations into the Sonoran

Desert community

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

prep

Historical plant-community inference

‘Melaneleodes Clade’ ancestors associated with

Pine-Juniper community of the Colorado

Plateau

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

prep

Historical plant-community inference

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

communities

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

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

Historical plant-community inference

• 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

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

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/