A STRUCTURED INVENTORY OF APPALACHIAN GRASS BALD AND HEATH BALD SPIDER ASSEMBLAGES AND A TEST OF SPECIES RICHNESS ESTIMATOR PERFORMANCE

By Douglas S. Toti, F. Coyle, Jeremy A. Miller. 2000

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The current rate of species attrition necessitates the development of quick and accurate sampling protocols and species richness estimators. Four time-based and one area-based methods were used to sample spiders of a grass bald and a heath bald in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in late spring and early fall of 1995. Eighty-four samples were collected at each site; 1853 adults and 91 species were found in the grass bald, 573 adults and 60 species in the heath bald. The data were analyzed with 11 species richness estimators: Chao & Lee 1, Chao & Lee 2, ACE, ICE, bootstrap, Chao 1, Chao 2, first-order jackknife, second-order jackknife, Michaelis-Menten runs, and Michaelis-Menten means. All but the Chao & Lee estimators generated richness estimates that clustered within a reasonable range, 106–160 species for the grass bald and 68–90 species for the heath bald. The failure of the observed species accumulation curve to level off for our data sets showed that more sampling would be needed to determine the number of species present as adults during the two sampling seasons. Although this prevented us from rigorously testing richness estimator performance, we found that the Michaelis-Menten means estimator performed better than the other estimators when judged by two indirect criteria of good estimator performance—the estimator curve should reach an asymptote with fewer samples than are required for the observed species accumulation curve to reach an asymptote, and the estimates should be close to reasonable visual extrapolations of the asymptote of the observed species accumulation curve. We postulate that the differences we found in species richness and taxon and guild composition between the spider assemblages of these two bald communities are, at least in part, a consequence of striking differences in the physiognomy, richness, and taxonomic composition of the plant associations of the two communities.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Genetics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bd20e752b92d1513f9a9a621b57e3479d52fb7ed

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Citations in the corpus

Rapid biodiversity assessment of spiders (Araneae) using semi‐quantitative sampling: a case study in a Mediterranean forest (2008, background): “…a sampling strategy for spiders that has subsequently been tested and refined in a number of spider studies, mainly in tropical and temperate forests (Coddington et al ., 1991, 1996; Silva & Coddington, 1996; Dobyns, 1997; Toti et al ., 2000; Sørensen et al ., 2002; Scharff et al ., 2003).”
Inventorying and Estimating Subcanopy Spider Diversity Using Semiquantitative Sampling Methods in an Afromontane Forest (2002, methodology): “The inventory presented here is the most elaborate to date based on the protocol outlined by Coddington et al. (1991) both in termsof numbersof samplesand specimens(Coddington et al. 1991, 1996, Dobyns1997, Toti et al. 2000 ).”
Assessing spider species richness and composition in Mediterranean cork oak forests (2008, background): “…parts of the world, i.e. Bolivia (Coddington et al., 1991), Peru (Silva and Coddington, 1996), the USA (Coddington et al., 1996; Dobyns, 1997; Toti et al., 2000), Tanzania (Sørensen et al., 2002) and Denmark (Scharff and optimized as the effort concerning the various variables, e.g. time of…”
Quantitative and Qualitative β Diversity Measures Lead to Different Insights into Factors That Structure Microbial Communities (2007, background): “For example, in treeless Appalachian spider communities, rare, transient species dominated qualitative measures of diversity, but ecological factors such as the availability of flying insect prey determined which species were abundant in a given community and thus dominated the quantitative measures”
Standardization and optimization of arthropod inventories—the case of Iberian spiders (2009, methodology): “Keywords Araneae Mediterranean Methodology Optimization algorithms Portugal Rapid biodiversity assessment Sampling Spain Species richness P. Cardoso Natural History Museum of Denmark, Zoological Museum and Centre for Macroecology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark P. Cardoso Azorean Biod”
Species diversity and structure of phytophagous beetle assemblages along a latitudinal gradient: predicting the potential impacts of climate change (2004, unknown): “Different studies have reached varying conclusions about the merits of each estimator (e.g. Colwell & Coddington, 1994; Chazdon et al., 1998; Toti et al., 2000; Hofer & Bersier, 2001; Chiarucci et al., 2003).”
WHEN TO QUIT? ESTIMATING SPIDER SPECIES RICHNESS IN A NORTHERN EUROPEAN DECIDUOUS FOREST (2003, unknown): “Toti et al. (2000) changed the name to “ground” to emphasize the target guild, but it is synonymous with “looking down” method of Coddington et al. (1991).”
Seasonality of spiders (Araneae) in Mediterranean ecosystems and its implications in the optimum sampling period (2007, background): “None the less, large seasonal differences in spider community composition, richness or abundance are invariably found, even surpassing habitat differences in many cases ( Weeks & Holtzer, 2000; Whitmore et al. , 2002 ).”