Life-strategy based structural features of the larval mosquito metacommunities in Hungary

The main hypotheses of this present study are: (i) the organization of mosquito metacommunities is based on spectral, spatial and temporal patterns of species-groups with similar life-strategy; (ii) species composition of these metacommunities shows regional differences, but the functional groups are conservative. Our hypotheses were tested on a database of 8,979 samples collected in Hungary. The following relationships were analysed: (i) concurrent mosquito species (Pearson correlation with Bonferroni and Benjamini-Liu corrections); (ii) seasonality of the communities (cluster-analysis, PCA, PCoA, MDS); (iii) relationships between community structure and water-coverage types (Pearson correlation, cluster-analyses, CCO) and (iiii) species groups with similar life-strategy. Results showed that (i) the supra-individual organization of mosquitoes composes metacommunities which are characterized by typical seasonality; (ii) species composition of the mosquito metacommunities is heterogeneous but the frequency of different species functional groups is constant. Our results originated from a temperate zone country with moderately rich Culicidae fauna because this was an ideal starting point for an extensive chain of analysis. Testing of our results herein is justified because of the outstanding relevance of mosquitoes to both public health and tourism. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]