Fig 1.
Ground temperature and relative humidity along the elevation gradient.
Average temperatures (A) and relative humidity (B) measured during the spring (6-May-2011 to 19-May-2011) and late-summer (1-September-2011 to 15-September-2011) seasonal sampling periods.
Fig 2.
MDS ordinations for all four arthropod taxa.
MDS ordination of sites according to the composition and abundance (square root transformed) using the combined data set of all four arthropod taxa (Coleoptera, Araneae, Orthoptera and Myriapoda). Similarity determined using the Bray-Curtis similarity coefficient. Sites that are closer together are more similar in arthropod composition.
Fig 3.
MDS ordinations of sites according to: Coleoptera (A), Araneae (B), Orthoptera (C) and Myriapoda (D) composition and abundance (square root transformed).
Similarity determined using the Bray-Curtis similarity coefficient. Sites that are closer together are more similar in arthropod composition.
Table 1.
Results from pairwise ANOSIM tests comparing differences in arthropod assemblages among adjacent biomes in each season (spring/May and summer/September).
Significant differences following Bonferroni adjustment (α = 0.005) are asterisked.
Table 2.
Results from SIMPER analyses, listing the six most important species according to its contribution to the dissimilarity between arthropod assemblages in adjacent biomes: DS = Desertscrub, GL = Grassland, CH = Chaparral, and PO = Pine Oak, P = Pine, MC = Mixed Conifer.
Capital letters preceding species names indicate to which major arthropod group the species belongs (C-Coleoptera, A- Araneae, O-Orthoptera, M-Myriapoda).
Table 3.
Results for pairwise ANOSIM tests comparing differences in arthropod assemblages between seasons in each biome.
Significant differences following Bonferroni adjustment (α = 0.0083) are asterisked.
Table 4.
Results from SIMPER analyses, listing the six most important GDA species according to its contribution to the dissimilarity within each biome during the two collection periods (spring [pre-monsoon], summer [monsoon]).
Capital letters preceding species names indicate to which major arthropod group the species belongs (C-Coleoptera, A- Araneae, O-Orthoptera, M-Myriapoda).
Fig 4.
Proportion of species in each taxa found in only one biome.
Proportion of species in each taxa (Coleoptera, Araneae, Orthoptera, and Myriapoda) found in only one biome (presented as a proportion of the total richness).
Fig 5.
Proportion of species collected that were found only in the two highest elevation biomes.
Pine and Mixed Conifer Forests. Numbers above each bar indicate the total number of species.