Remarkable Population Resilience in a North African Endemic Damselfly in the Face of Rapid Agricultural Transformation
by
,
Rassim Khelifa
1,2,*
,
Hayat Mahdjoub
3,
Affef Baaloudj
4,
Robert A. Cannings
5 and
Michael J. Samways
6 1
Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
2
Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
3
Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland
4
Laboratoire Biologie, Eau & Environnement (LBEE), Faculty of SNV-STU, University of 8 May 1945, Guelma 24000, Algeria
5
Entomology, Royal British Columbia Museum, 675 Belleville Street, Victoria, BC V8W 9W2, Canada
6
Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology, Stellenbosch University, Victoria Street, Stellenbosch 7602, South Africa
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Insects 2021, 12(4), 353; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12040353
Submission received: 11 March 2021
/
Revised: 8 April 2021
/
Accepted: 10 April 2021
/
Published: 15 April 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Odonates in Human Environments)
Simple Summary
There has been a rapid expansion of agricultural area worldwide, resulting in a substantial change in the physical structure, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning of various natural habitats. In North Africa, many natural habitats have been transformed into agricultural lands, especially in the North, where biodiversity is the highest, to meet the food security and economic development of a rapidly growing population. We estimated the agricultural expansion in North African region between the 1990s and 2000s and found that the percentage of agriculture-free area within the species range declined from 79.5% to 26.2%. Knowing that agroecosystems near lotic environments simplify the structural complexity of habitats (from heterogeneous to homogenous ecological communities) of amphibiotic species such as odonates, we estimated the geographic range of an endemic damselfly and quantified the temporal change in the overlap between agriculture and species occurrence. Our results showed the overlap more than tripled between 1992 and 2005, suggesting that the species experienced a radical change in its terrestrial habitats. We conducted capture–mark–recapture to confirm that the species survives by frequently using croplands and grasslands.
Abstract
Agriculture can be pervasive in its effect on wild nature, affecting various types of natural habitats, including lotic ecosystems. Here, we assess the extent of agricultural expansion on lotic systems in Northern Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco) and document its overlap with the distribution of an endemic damselfly, Platycnemis subdilatata Selys, using species distribution modeling. We found that agricultural land cover increased by 321% in the region between 1992 and 2005, and, in particular, the main watercourses experienced an increase in agricultural land cover from 21.4% in 1992 to 78.1% in 2005, together with an increase in the intensity of 226% in agricultural practices. We used capture–mark–recapture (CMR) surveys in terrestrial habitats surrounding a stream bordered by grassland and cropland in northeastern Algeria to determine demographic parameters and population size, as well as cropland occupancy. CMR modeling showed that the recapture and survival probabilities had an average of 0.14 (95%CI: 0.14–0.17) and 0.86 (0.85–0.87), respectively. We estimated a relatively large population of P. subdilatata (~1750 individuals) in terrestrial habitats. The occupancy of terrestrial habitats by adults was spatially structured by age. Our data suggest that P. subdilatata has survived agricultural expansion and intensification better than other local odonate species, mainly because it can occupy transformed landscapes, such as croplands and grasslands.
Keywords:
Odonata; Zygoptera; agroecosystems; habitat degradation; aquatic insects; river
