This talk, given at the 2016 International Congress of Entomology in Orlando, is about using specimen data to explore and understand patterns of present and historical distributions of the darkling beetles in the genus Eleodes Eschscholtz.
Forensic Biology & Its biological significance.pdf
Exploring Patterns of Darkling Beetle Distributions in the Genus Eleodes
1. Exploring patterns of darkling beetle
distributions in the genus Eleodes
(Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)
M. Andrew Johnston
ajohnston@asu.edu
Edward Gilbert
egbot@asu.edu@MAndrewJohnston
http://slideshare.net/MAndrewJ/patterns-of-distribution
2. As a grad student studying
systematics, are biodiversity
data/informatics useful for me?
3. As a grad student studying
systematics, are biodiversity
data/informatics useful for me?
Well – what data are available
for my taxon of study?
4. 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.anthracinusBlaisdell
E.subnitensLeConte
E.nitidusCasey
E.longicollisLeConte
5. Eleodes Eschscholtz
(Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)
• Larvae live in the soil
• Adults are wingless
• Omnivorous
scavengers
• No known specific
associations with
plants
E.carbonarius(Say)
E.caudiferusLeConte
6. Exploring Eleodes occurrence data
36,317 Preserved Specimens
22,458 Preserved Specimens
Searching all fields for “Eleodes”
7. 36,317 Preserved Specimens
All had “Eleodes” present in at least ‘Genus’ or ‘ScientificName’ fields
589 Scientific Names
Exploring Eleodes occurrence data
8. 36,317 Preserved Specimens
All had “Eleodes” present in at least ‘Genus’ or ‘ScientificName’ fields
589 Scientific Names
54 Families
Exploring Eleodes occurrence data
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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
15. 44,082 Preserved Specimens
All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field
678 Scientific Names
Exploring Eleodes occurrence data
16. Eleodes Occurrence Data
44,082 Preserved Specimens
All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field
678 Scientific Names
1 Family (Tenebrionidae)
17. 44,082 Preserved Specimens
All had “Eleodes” present in ‘ScientificName’ field
678 Scientific Names
1 Genus (Eleodes)
1 Family (Tenebrionidae)
Exploring Eleodes occurrence data
18. 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
19. 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
20. What can these data tell us
about distributions of species?
22. 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
23. 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
24. 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*
25. CORRELATION
Analyze input set of
lat/long coordinates:
• Correlate an animal
species with SEINet
plants
• Place that animal in a
plant-driven biotic
community
26. Using CORRELATION, we can ask
questions about ecological
communities
And answer them based on
specimen occurrence data
27. Where can we find a certain species?
“You can find it in
oak-juniper
forests in
southern Arizona”
Eleodes madrensis Johnston,
2015
28. 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”
31. Differentiate habitats of similar species
Eleodes arcuatus Casey, 1884Eleodes debilis Horn, 1870
Only share a single species of top 10
32. Differentiate habitats of similar species
Eleodes arcuatus Casey, 1884
Eleodes arcuatus is
correlated with oak-
juniper mid-elevation
transition forest
33. Differentiate habitats of similar species
Eleodes debilis Horn, 1870
Eleodes debilis is
correlated with riparian
broadleaf plants from a
similar elevation
34. CORRELATION transforms our approach to
understanding distribution
Ecological Community
“Authoritative observation”
Repeatable, specimen-based
correlation
35. Ecological Community
“Authoritative observation”
Repeatable, specimen-based
correlation
Spatial Distribution
Geographic polygons
Specimen-driven, co-occurring
species communities
CORRELATION transforms our approach to
understanding distribution
36. Can we infer ancestor-
descendant plant-community
shifts?
37. 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
38. 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
39. 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
41. 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
43. 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
44. • 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
45. • Expand range to all North American Eleodes
species and plant communities
• Incorporate fossil data to constrain historically
available plant communities
Future directions
46. • 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
47. As a grad student studying
systematics, are biodiversity
data/informatics useful for me?
48. 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
49. Special thanks to:
ASU Herbarium:
Les Landrum
Darryl Lafferty
Liz Makings
Walt Fertig
Lab members:
Nico Franz
Guanyang Zhang
Sangmi Lee
Sal Anzaldo
Andrew Jansen
Brian Riley
Data Entry:
Chris Henny
Andrew Galvan
Colin McMartin
Dylan Cooper
Collaborators:
Aaron Smith
Kojun Kanda
Funding:
NSF ARTS DEB-1258154
2016 Evolutionary Biology
Summer Research
Fellowship
Data, Analyses, Scripts: http://github.com/mandrewj/
