Dryad
Published August 24, 2022 | Version v1
Dataset Open

The global distribution of known and undiscovered ant biodiversity

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
  • 2. University of Hong Kong
  • 3. Florida International University
  • 4. Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
  • 5. California Academy of Sciences
  • 6. University of Liverpool
  • 7. La Trobe University
  • 8. University of Utah
  • 9. University of California, Davis
  • 10. National Tsing Hua University
  • 11. Harvard University
  • 12. University of Oklahoma
  • 13. Yale University
  • 14. University of Florida
  • 15. University of Montpellier
  • 16. Chaffey College
  • 17. Instituto Geofísico de la Escuela Politécnica Nacional
  • 18. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
  • 19. Castelldefels, Barcelona*
  • 20. University of Venda
  • 21. Arizona State University
  • 22. Hospital de Clínicas Universidade Federal do Paraná
  • 23. Mississippi State University
  • 24. The University of Texas at El Paso
  • 25. University of Sydney
  • 26. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
  • 27. North Carolina State University

Description

Invertebrates constitute the majority of animal species and are critical for ecosystem functioning and services. Nonetheless, global invertebrate biodiversity patterns and their congruences with vertebrates remain largely unknown. We resolve the first high-resolution (~20-km) global diversity map for a major invertebrate clade, ants, using biodiversity informatics, range modeling, and machine learning to synthesize existing knowledge and predict the distribution of undiscovered diversity. We find that ants and different vertebrate groups have distinct features in their patterns of richness and rarity, underscoring the need to consider a diversity of taxa in conservation. However, despite their phylogenetic and physiological divergence, ant distributions are not highly anomalous relative to variation among vertebrate clades. Furthermore, our models predict rarity centers largely overlap (78%), suggesting that general forces shape endemism patterns across taxa. This raises confidence that conservation of areas important for small-ranged vertebrates will benefit invertebrates while providing a "treasure map" to guide future discovery.

Notes

The programming code included in "Kass_et_al_2022_SciAdv_prog_code", archived on Zenodo as software, is written in both R and Python and is structured into a simple R package for ease of use. Additionally, ArcGIS software was used to build the geodatabase in "results_species_add/centers_projected/hs_proj_IRS60K_pairwiseInt.gdb" and can be used to access the data within, but the data can also be accessed via R or Python.

Funding provided by: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004199
Award Number: subsidy funding

Funding provided by: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001691
Award Number: KAKENHI 17K15180

Funding provided by: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001691
Award Number: Postdoctoral Fellowships for Foreign Researchers

Funding provided by: Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100006120
Award Number: 4-1904

Funding provided by: Leverhulme Trust
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000275
Award Number: RPG-2017-271

Funding provided by: National Science Foundation
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001
Award Number: DEB-1932405

Files

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Additional details

Related works

Is derived from
10.5281/zenodo.7020283 (DOI)
Is source of
10.5281/zenodo.6878656 (DOI)