Moth Communities Reveal High Stability Despite Ongoing Compositional Shifts Over Five Years Following Hurricane Disturbance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Extreme climatic events are expected to increase in frequency and severity under climate change, with lasting consequences for ecological communities worldwide. Global insect declines have raised concerns for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem stability, as shifts in insect communities can trigger cascading effects across trophic levels. Yet insect responses to large-scale disturbances remain poorly understood, particularly in tropical forests where long-term datasets are scarce and taxonomic knowledge is limited. We examined the response trajectories and stability of moth communities in two forest types in Puerto Rico following the September 2017 hurricanes Irma and María. Using monthly surveys conducted 5 months before and 6 months after the storms, followed by annual surveys over 5 years, we tracked changes in moth abundance, richness, and composition. We also evaluated ecological stability across multiple dimensions (i.e., resistance, resilience, recovery, and temporal stability) for the entire community and separately for Crambidae, Erebidae, and Geometridae. Despite initial declines, abundance and richness surpassed baseline levels within the first year, especially in old-growth tabonuco stands, which may have provided more stable microhabitats and resources than palm stands. Resistance varied by family, with grass-feeding crambids increasing in abundance and arboreal-feeding geometrids experiencing the greatest species loss. Abundance and richness stabilized within 2 years, likely influenced by trophic interactions that regulated insect outbreaks. Species composition continued to shift over time, reflecting ongoing reassembly, while compositional and functional stability metrics suggested recovery within 5 years. This highlights both the resilience of the moth community and the dynamic nature of post-disturbance reassembly. Our findings underscore the value of multi-year, post-disturbance datasets for uncovering recovery pathways and enhancing our understanding of ecological stability. As extreme events intensify across biomes, insights into resilience dynamics will be critical for sustaining insect biodiversity and the ecological functions they provide.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".