Unraveling the spatiotemporal dynamics of communities is critical to understand how biodiversity responds to global changes. However, this task is not trivial, as these dynamics are quite complex, and most studies are limited to few taxa at small local and temporal scales. Tropical mountains are ideal indicators of biodiversity response since these endangered and complex ecosystems include many distinct habitats within small geographical areas, harboring a megadiverse fauna, especially insects. Indeed, while insects are particularly sensitive to environmental and climatic changes, the extent of the impact of climate variability on mountain tropical insect diversity remains poorly understood. Here we present time‐series data from a decade of studying the spatiotemporal dynamics of ants, butterflies and dung beetles. We assessed patterns of species richness change along the elevational gradient for each taxonomic group per sampling year and cumulatively over years. We then quantified community changes over time by measuring the variation in species richness across sampling years (temporal trends in α‐diversity), and the temporal variation in species composition (temporal β‐diversity) evaluating species gains and losses over time. We also evaluated the variation of air temperature and humidity through meteorological stations within the sampling years. We detected a classical pattern of species richness decline with elevation, albeit with a noticeable increase in species richness variation with increasing elevation. The temporal β‐diversity exhibited considerable variability across elevations, taxa, and time. Only dung beetles presented a positive relationship with humidity variation over the years. Critically, both rare and common species drove extirpations and colonizations, and we found no trend of temporal decline of insect species at local and regional scales. Our study shows that insect metacommunity responses to elevation and global changes are rather complex, and stresses the importance of long‐term studies that incorporate multiple sampling periods and different groups of organisms in tropical mountains.

中文翻译：

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热带海拔梯度昆虫元群落的复杂时间动态


揭示群落的时空动态对于理解生物多样性如何应对全球变化至关重要。然而，这项任务并非微不足道，因为这些动态非常复杂，而且大多数研究仅限于局部和时间尺度上的少数分类单元。热带山脉是生物多样性响应的理想指标，因为这些濒危且复杂的生态系统包括小地理区域内的许多不同的栖息地，栖息着种类繁多的动物群，特别是昆虫。事实上，虽然昆虫对环境和气候变化特别敏感，但气候变化对山地热带昆虫多样性的影响程度仍然知之甚少。在这里，我们展示了十年来研究蚂蚁、蝴蝶和粪甲虫时空动态的时间序列数据。我们评估了每个采样年和多年来累积的每个分类群沿海拔梯度的物种丰富度变化模式。然后，我们通过测量采样年中物种丰富度的变化（α多样性的时间趋势）以及评估物种随时间的增益和损失的物种组成的时间变化（时间β多样性）来量化群落随时间的变化。我们还通过气象站评估了采样年内气温和湿度的变化。我们发现了物种丰富度随海拔下降的经典模式，尽管物种丰富度变化随着海拔的增加而显着增加。时间β多样性在海拔、分类群和时间上表现出相当大的变异性。多年来，只有粪甲虫与湿度变化呈正相关。 至关重要的是，稀有物种和常见物种都推动了灭绝和殖民化，而且我们没有发现昆虫物种在局部和区域范围内出现暂时下降的趋势。我们的研究表明，昆虫群落对海拔和全球变化的反应相当复杂，并强调了长期研究的重要性，其中包括热带山区的多个采样周期和不同生物群。