Vegetation structure and climate shape mountain arthropod distributions across trophic levels

Arthropods play a vital role in ecosystems, yet their distributions remain
poorly understood, particularly in mountainous regions. This study delves
into the modeling of the distribution of 31 foliar arthropod genera in the
French Alps, using a comprehensive approach encompassing multi-trophic
sampling, community DNA metabarcoding, and random forest models. The
results underscore the significant importance of vegetation structure,
such as herbaceous vegetation density, and forest density and
heterogeneity, along with climate, in shaping the distributions of most
arthropods. These responses to environmental gradients are consistent
across trophic groups, with the exception of nectarivores, whose
distributions are more sensitive to landscape structure and water
availability. By leveraging community DNA metabarcoding, this study sheds
light on the understudied drivers of arthropod distributions, emphasizing
the importance of modeling across diverse trophic groups to anticipate
arthropod responses to global change.