Elevation and Diversity

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Biological diversity is affected by elevation through associated changes in temperature and precipitation. How those changes will affect the most diverse taxonomic group (terrestrial arthropods), in the most diverse regions (the tropics) remains unknown. The long-term vision of my research program is to understand the causes and consequences of diversity and elevation by lifting the concealing veil of cryptic tropical insect species biology. What species live where? What is the thermal tolerance of these species? How do species deal with the heat and dryness of low elevation dry forest and the cold and wet of high elevation cloud forest? How are these distributions and adaptations changing through time? Fulfilling this vision will result in better delineation of elevational ranges for tropical insect species, a more thorough understanding of ectotherm evolution and ecology, a toolkit of predictions regarding which species will be most affected by hot temperatures on their relentless march upslope, and a description of many tropical species that frees them into the scientific literature. The 4 PhD and 2 MSc students who will be trained in this program will help to accelerate my research vision. They will be trained in making research and community contributions in a lab and with a mentor that is uniquely prepared for this undertaking: with >10 years of sampling in Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG; Costa Rica), >100 publications, and who has helped describe >1000 species. My research program has elucidated how numerous hyperdiverse tropical arthropod groups are affected by elevation. This DG proposal describes HQP training that contributes to, and transitions more than 13 years of intensive sampling and formal description of leaf-litter arthropods and abiotic variables across 1,500 m elevational transects in ACG. We will use field and laboratory methods to estimate thermal tolerance and dispersal ability for these wild taxa while using genetics (DNA barcode and metabarcoding) to estimate cryptic diversity and speciation and then capitalise on all information sources to formally describe the species we discover. Finally, we will extend the standardised sampling protocol to a North American elevational gradient to enable a unique tropical/temperate comparison. Understanding and predicting such changes matters for several reasons. Climate change is pushing warmer temperatures upslope and will reduce the amount, and predictability, of precipitation that tropical or temperate high-elevation environments receive. Many, perhaps most, of the species of leaf-litter arthropods in these high-elevation communities are without scientific names. As such, changes in their ranges are, at best coarse, or at worst; invisible. Finally, we know next to nothing about the functional biology (e.g. thermal tolerance or dispersal capacity) of most species of arthropod, tropical or temperate. With the program described here my HQP and I will begin to change this.