Species composition and absolute number of scorpion species collected at Pimenteira, Pollinator Trail and Saco Road (Pernambuco, Brazil). Specimens were collected in March 2015 and September 2016, during the rainy (R) and dry (D) season, respectively. The sample effort resulted in the collection of 269 specimens.
Vegetation structure may also be involved in the maintenance of arthropod assemblages, not only by its direct and additive effects upon the availability of physical microhabitats, but also by establishing a microclimate favourable to the occurrence of a plethora of species (Leal et al. 2016; Mata et al. 2017). In the case of scorpions, previous studies have demonstrated that the variation in species richness and composition may follow climatic clines (Lira et al. 2019b), even at small spatial scales (Foord et al. 2015). Accordingly, our results indicated that scorpion assemblages are responsive to temperature variations in terms of species replacement. This suggests that climatic features play a relevant role in the maintenance of species variability amongst scorpion assemblages, which is in accordance with previous studies that investigate the effects of climatic variation on scorpion assemblages at local and regional scales (e.g. Araújo et al. 2010; Lira et al. 2018). This finding could also explain why sites with similar vegetation structure and thus climatic conditions, are expected to harbour similar scorpion assemblages in term of species composition (Fig. 2A, B). This assumption, however, should be confirmed by future studies addressing the potential effects of microclimatic conditions on the structuring of scorpion assemblages in Caatinga landscapes. Ideally, such studies should be temporally broad, to encompass entire climatic trends (e.g. precipitation seasonality) present in Caatinga environments (Silva et al. 2018). Nevertheless, we reiterate that ineffective efforts to preserve the native vegetation in Caatinga landscapes may lead to a reduction in the species pool of arthropod assemblages mediated by the reduction of physical microhabitats and the homogenisation of their climatic conditions. A similar mechanism was adopted to explain the reduction of species richness in other taxa, such as ants (Arnan et al. 2018) and dung beetles (Liberal et al. 2011).
Scorpion Season 1 Complete Download
2ff7e9595c
Comments