Patterns of Ecological Performance and Aquatic Insect Diversity in High Quality Protected Area

170 Pages·2017·5.57 MB·English

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Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School
5-2012
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Jason Lesley Robinson
University of Tennessee Knoxville, [email protected]
Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss
Part of the Biodiversity Commons
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Robinson, Jason Lesley, "Patterns of Ecological Performance and Aquatic Insect Diversity in High Quality
Protected Area Networks. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2012.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1342
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To the Graduate Council:
I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Jason Lesley Robinson entitled "Patterns of
Ecological Performance and Aquatic Insect Diversity in High Quality Protected Area Networks." I
have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and
recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy, with a major in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
James A. Fordyce, Major Professor
We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance:
J. Kevin Moulton, Nathan J. Sanders, Daniel Simberloff, Charles R. Parker
Accepted for the Council:
Carolyn R. Hodges
Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School
(Original signatures are on file with official student records.)
Patterns of Ecological Performance and Aquatic Insect Diversity in High Quality
Protected Area Networks

A Dissertation Presented for

The Doctor of Philosophy Degree

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Jason Lesley Robinson

May 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Jason Lesley Robinson

All rights reserved.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Any dissertation is a fruit of the joint efforts of many people and I will never be able to
fully list those persons here. But above all others, I would like to thank my loving wife
Jill for the support, patience, tolerance, encouragement and clarity of focus that was
absolutely necessary for me to complete this project. Next, I would like to mention my
committee members. First, mentor, advisor, and friend Chuck Parker. Chuck hired me
to work on the project that eventually became the basis of much of this research,
patiently taught me to how to extend my taxonomic skills to adult aquatic insects and
taught me to enjoy opera. Nate Sanders has been a supreme example of how to mentor
graduate students and maturing ecologists. In many independent ways this dissertation
could  not  have  proceeded  without  Nate’s  generous  and  magnanimous  support  and  
advice. Jim Fordyce took me on as a graduate student knowing full well that I was
interested in the far more interesting branch of Amphiesmenoptera than is his usual
focus, and has been an exemplar of how to encourage without advocating. Whenever I
have been stuck, needed someone to discuss ideas or found myself drowning in a sea of
R code Jim has been there to throw me a rope and toss me back in the pool. Dan
Simberloff has shaped the development of my ideas about what ecology is and does in
ways that cannot be learned from literature or books, as well as my personal growth as
a musician and a human being and not just as an ecologist. Kevin Moulton has
dedicated his time, specimens and lab space to my early attempts to settle on a
dissertation topic, taught me more about insects than I had ever imagined I might know.
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Many other people have been instrumental along this path, providing discussion,
assistance or encouragement: Andy Bartley, Bruce Bauer, Steve Beaty, Greg Crutsinger,
Dylan Dietrich-Reed, Corey Dugan, David A. Etnier, Ben Fitzpatrick, Matt Fitzpatrick,
Steve Furches, CJ Geraci, Melissa Geraghty, Stan Guffey, Steve Harris, Lauren Harvey,
Darrin Hulsey, Phillip Hollingsworth, Jonathan Hulvey, Jennifer Joice, Dan Jones, Jennifer
Krauel, JP Lessard, Zach Marion, Gary McCracken, John Morse, Matt Niemiller, Dave
Penrose, Greg Pond, Johnathan Pruitt, Graham Reynolds, Dave Ruiter, Frank Spilker, Ian
Stocks, Beth Summers, Tony VanWinkle, John Weaver, Xin Zhou and others I have
certainly omitted.
The Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of
Tennessee has supported me in many vital ways, from funding my participation in a
species distribution modeling workshop in Arizona to providing me an opportunity to
further my research and teaching skills as I worked to complete my degree. The
National Park Service and United States Geological Survey funded and permitted much
of the work that I used in this dissertation. The Highlands Biological Station has played
an integral role in my development as a scientist and has funded summer research
efforts that have proven valuable in many ways professional, academic and personal.

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ABSTRACT
Protected areas are at the heart of plans for biodiversity conservation. Networks
of protected areas may provide opportunities to protect conservation targets or
objectives not attainable for single parcels of land. The landscape of potential decisions
available to conservation planners is constrained by uncertainty about the form of
future climate states. New methods are available that can provide objective
assessments of the direction and magnitude of shifts in climate regimes that are not first
filtered through theoretical responses of biodiversity. Successful predictions of where,
in protected area networks, climates are most likely to change, or most likely to remain
in situ, would be valuable information for planners and conservationists. As climate
change influences the potential distribution of plants and animals on the landscape, the
realized effects of these changes will be determined in part by the capacity for dispersal
among habitats, including protected areas. Understanding the processes that generate
species diversity first requires describing the patterns; for aquatic insect species in the
southeastern United States these patterns are not fully known. I describe the
composition of aquatic insect assemblages in national parks as a function of the size and
distance between parks, composition of regional source pools, position along
environmental gradients and assessments of the perceived imperilment of individual
aquatic insect species. I compare turnover among habitats and parks to test hypotheses
about the partitioning of species diversity among sites, including general comparisons of
headwater and mid-order streams and more explicit hypotheses on the structure of
turnover along spatial and environmental gradients. Benthic data on family or genera
level identifications cannot adequately test these hypotheses because the lack of
taxonomic resolution obscures the sources of compositional dissimilarity between sites.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS….............................................................................iii
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………………v
CHAPTER I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….1

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………..2
Background.…………………………………………………………………………………….3
Motivations for protected area conservation………………………………….4
Chapter II………………………………………………………………………………………...6
Chapter III………………………………………………………………………………………..9
Chapter IV….……………………….………………………………………………………….13
Future  directions…………………………………………………………………………….16
References…….……………………………………………………………………………….17
Appendix  I    Figures  and  Tables……………………………………………………….21

CHAPTER II. A METHOD FOR PREDICTING IN SITU CLIMATE REFUGIA AND
FUTURE CONNECTIVITY IN PROTECTED AREA NETWORKS………………………23

Abstract….……………………………………………………………………………………...24
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………...26
Methods………………………………………………………………………………………...31
Results…………………………………………………………………………………………...33
Discussion………………………………………………………………………………………36
References……………………………………………………………………………………..41
Appendix  II.    Figures  and  Tables…………………………………………………..…46

CHAPTER III. PREVALENCE OF IMPERILED AQUATIC INSECT SPECIES IN A
HIGH QUALITY PROTECTED AREA NETWORK…………………………………………..63

Abstract….………………………………………………………………………………………64
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………66
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Methods…………………………………………………………………………………………68
Results……………………………………………………………………………………………72
Discussion………………………………………………………………………………………75
References……………………………………………………………………………………..84
Appendix III.    Figures  and  Tables…………………………………………………….88

CHAPTER IV. CADDISFLY SPECIES TURNOVER ALONG HYDROLOGICAL
GRADIENTS AND ACROSS VARYING SOURCE POOLS................................102

Abstract….…………………………………………………………………………………….103
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….105
Methods….…………………………………………………………………………..……….110
Results….…………………………………………………………………………..………….115
Discussion…………………………………………………………………………..….…….118
References……………………………………………………………………..….…………126
Appendix IV. Figures and  Tables………………………………………..….…….131

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………………………………..150

Chapter II………………………………………………………………………………………150
Chapter III………………………………………………………………….…………………151
Chapter IV…………………………………………………………………………………….152

VITA…………………………………………………………………………………………….…………155

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LIST OF TABLES

CHAPTER I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION

No Tables

CHAPTER II. A METHOD FOR PREDICTING IN SITU CLIMATE REFUGIA AND
FUTURE CONNECTIVITY IN PROTECTED AREA NETWORKS

Table II-1. Climate footprint dynamics for 163 national parks in two
future  climate  scenarios………………………………………………………………………47

Table II-2. Supplemental table of abbreviations and addresses for each
national  park……………………………………………………………………………………….52

CHAPTER III. PREVALENCE OF IMPERILED AQUATIC INSECT SPECIES IN A
HIGH QUALITY PROTECTED AREA NETWORK

Table III-1. Parameter estimates for species-area relationships among
three insect orders ………………………………………………………………..,,…………..91

Table III-2. Distance-decay regression estimates for southeastern aquatic
insect assemblages…..……………………………………………………………….…………92

Table III-3. Distance-decay regression estimates for aquatic insects in
varying categories of perceived threat..……………………………………………….93

Table III-4. Partial mantel tests on correlation between aquatic insect
community dissimilarities and geographic/climatic distance correlations.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….94

Table III-5a. Null model probabilities that observed proportions of EPT
species in any global imperilment ranks are larger than would be
expected from a random draw from the regional  species  pool……………..95

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