Altitudinal gradients in a volcanic island: effect on biodiversity and species richness of the dipteran fauna

Although research on environmental gradients is relatively common, the altitudinal gradient is one of the least explored. The discrepancies between earlier studies attributing highest diversity to lowest altitude and more recent studies where this altitudinal pattern is not maintained justify the pertinence of investigating the way diversity gradually changes with altitude. The studied altitudinal gradient is located inside the volcanic cone, on one of volcanic island Azores, and the investigated altitudes were 450, 600 and 800 meters a.s.l. Malaise traps were used to capture insects and Diptera were selected for this study. Application of the Zipt-Mandelbrot model to rank-abundance curves of Diptera sampled at three different altitudes, as well as analyses of richness, diversity and evenness, led to the conclusion that medium altitude was the stratum with the highest niche diversity, the highest specific diversity and the highest predictability. Non-metric multidimensional scaling allowed an excellent separation of the three altitudes sampled, suggesting that habitat characteristics significantly differ with altitude. The study, undertaken in a volcanic island of the Azores, Atlantic Ocean, will have heuristic interest to the scientific community in general and especially to those researchers studying environmental gradients. The results of this research will underpin further work on the insect biodiversity in the Azores Archipelago.