Science Enabled by Specimen Data

Liu, S., S. Xia, D. Wu, J. E. Behm, Y. Meng, H. Yuan, P. Wen, et al. 2022. Understanding global and regional patterns of termite diversity and regional functional traits. iScience: 105538. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.105538

Our understanding of broad-scale biodiversity and functional trait patterns is largely based on plants, and relatively little information is available on soil arthropods. Here, we investigated the distribution of termite diversity globally and morphological traits and diversity across China. Our analyses showed increasing termite species richness with decreasing latitude at both the globally, and within-China. Additionally, we detected obvious latitudinal trends in the mean community value of termite morphological traits on average, with body size and leg length decreasing with increasing latitude. Furthermore, temperature, NDVI and water variables were the most important drivers controlling the variation in termite richness, and temperature and soil properties were key drivers of the geographic distribution of termite morphological traits. Our global termite richness map is one of the first high resolution maps for any arthropod group and especially given the functional importance of termites, our work provides a useful baseline for further ecological analysis.

Hochmair, H. H., R. H. Scheffrahn, M. Basille, and M. Boone. 2020. Evaluating the data quality of iNaturalist termite records P. Barden [ed.],. PLOS ONE 15: e0226534. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226534

Citizen science (CS) contributes to the knowledge about species distributions, which is a critical foundation in the studies of invasive species, biological conservation, and response to climatic change. In this study, we assessed the value of CS for termites worldwide. First, we compared the abunda…