Ecosystems across the globe are facing a range of anthropogenically-driven changes, including biotic invasions, urbanisation and land-use alterations, which can affect ecosystem structure and stability. To manage both native species decline and invasive species spread it is imperative that we can accurately predict how current global environmental change will affect biotic communities.
I examined effects of different land uses at both landscape- and habitat-scales on native (Culex pervigilans) and exotic (Aedes notoscriptus) mosquito distributions in lentic (standing water) freshwater habitats. Because of the importance of land use on habitat characteristics, I expected different land uses would contain different biotic communities, and that mosquitoes would more likely be present in simple communities with fewer predators. Moreover, because habitat disturbance and modification can significantly influence community structure, I expected less diverse pond communities in habitats within highly modified urban and pasture land uses would also be more likely to contain mosquitoes. I found land use affects mosquito presence, and was likely strongly linked with land-use effects on predator presence and taxon richness. Predators were more common in habitats within native forest and tussock grassland, and mosquitoes were almost entirely restricted to urban and pasture habitats. Moreover, local habitat characteristics had a strong influence on both mosquito and predator presence, with deeper and more open habitats supporting greater predator abundance, thereby excluding mosquito larvae.
To further investigate the global of climate change on predator-prey interactions involving Ae. notoscriptus and Cx. pervigilans, I conducted two experiments. Firstly, I measured effects of habitat warming and short- and long-term habitat drying on interactions between the two mosquito species and three predatory invertebrates, Anisops wakefieldi backswimmers, Austrolestes colensonis damselflies, and Procordulia smithii dragonflies, which represented predators characteristic of different habitat drying regimes. A second experiment further tested interactions between A. wakefieldi and the two mosquito species in a wider range of temperatures. There was little evidence that short-term habitat drying affected interaction strengths of any of the predator-prey combinations, but strong evidence for the importance of temperature-mediated predation rates which depended on both predator and prey identities. Here, predators characteristic of more temporary hydroperiods showed temperature-mediated predation responses on the two mosquito species: increasing temperature resulted in greater predation on native Cx. pervigilans but not effect on predation on exotic Ae. notoscriptus. The second experiment revealed, again, that predation depended on both temperature and mosquito species with higher predation occurring at increased temperature, but also indicated life history traits could mediate the overall effect of temperature-mediated predation.
Overall, I have shown that interactions between temperature, predator identity and mosquito species will be very important in determining the potential for mosquitoes to invade under a changing climate. Considering effects of both climate change and land-use-driven habitat modification on the invasion potential of mosquitoes in freshwater communities will therefore be important for managing both native species decline and spread of invaders. Moreover, research and management decisions on critical species like mosquitoes will need to encompass multiple drivers of climate change at both global and local scales.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:canterbury.ac.nz/oai:ir.canterbury.ac.nz:10092/11036 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Hunt, Sophia Katherine |
| Publisher | University of Canterbury. Biological Sciences |
| Source Sets | University of Canterbury |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic thesis or dissertation, Text |
| Rights | Copyright Sophia Katherine Hunt, http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/thesis/etheses_copyright.shtml |
| Relation | NZCU |
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