Data from: Climatic and vegetational drivers of insect beta diversity at the continental scale

Aim We construct a framework for mapping pattern and drivers of insect
diversity at the continental scale and use it to test whether and which
environmental gradients drive insect beta diversity. Location Global;
North and Central America; Western Europe. Time period 21st century. Major
taxa studied Insects. Methods An informatics system was developed to
integrate terrestrial data on insects with environmental parameters. We
mined repositories of data for distribution, climatic data were retrieved
(WorldClim), and vegetation parameters inferred from remote sensing
analysis (MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields). Beta diversity between
sites was calculated and then modeled with two methods, Mantel test with
multiple regression and generalized dissimilarity modeling. Results
Geographic distance was the main driver of insect beta diversity.
Independent of geographic distance, bioclimate variables explained more
variance in dissimilarity than vegetation variables, although the
particular variables found to be significant were more consistent in the
latter, particularly, tree cover. Tree cover gradients drove compositional
dissimilarity at denser coverages, in both continental case studies. For
climate, gradients in temperature parameters were significant in driving
beta diversity more so than gradients in precipitation parameters. Main
conclusions Although environmental gradients drive insect beta diversity
independently of geography, the relative contribution of different
climatic and vegetational parameters is not expected to be consistent in
different study systems. With further incorporation of additional temporal
information and variables, this approach will enable the development of a
predictive framework for conserving insect biodiversity at the global
scale.