Elevational biodiversity gradients in the Neotropics: Perspectives from freshwater caddisflies (Insecta: Trichoptera)

that tropical lowland Trichoptera that show narrower thermal tolerances compared to mid and high elevation species [13, 54], face greater risk of extinction for lowland than highland species in the face of rising temperatures. Coupled with climate change, habitat destruction, overexploitation, pollution, and reduction in connectivity are the primary drivers of freshwater ecosystem degradation [55, 62]. For mid and high-elevation taxa, the habitat degradation that leads to loss of functional connectivity is a major threat [63]. The fact that geographic distance and elevation explained a high percentage of community variance across the studied elevation gradient and the aforementioned threats, highlights the need for conserving river networks along the elevation gradient to effectively protect Trichoptera diversity. Supporting information S1 Fig. Natural vegetation cover across the elevation gradient. (TIF) S2 Fig. Species accumulation curves for species collected and CHAO1 species estimators for each of the localities sampled. (TIF) S3 Fig. Sample coverage across localities. (TIF) S1 Table. Complete dataset that contains species collected per site, date with abundances and sex ratios. (XLSX) S2 Table. Dissimilarity (pairwise comparison) of Trichoptera genera community composi- tion between localities. (DOCX) S3 Table. Dissimilarity (pairwise comparison) of Trichoptera species community composi- tion between sampling localities. (DOCX) Acknowledgments We are grateful to Anderson Medina and Inty Arcos for their field assistance during this proj-

ect. This work could not have been done without the generous help of the stewards and staff of the following private reserves: Bellavista Lodge (Richard Parson), Intillacta Reserve (Inty Arcos and Nina Duarte), Mashpi Reserve (Carolina Proaño, Mateo Rolda´n and Felipe Andrade), Mashpi-Shungo and Pambiliño Reserves and Chocolate Mashpi (Agustina Arcos, Alejandro Solano, and Oliver Torres), El Cedral Biological Reserve (Germa´n Toasa), and Ver- decocha Reserve (Marı´a Elisa Visuete). We thank Raphael Ligeiro for the valuable reviews on early version of this manuscript. Author Contributions Conceptualization: Blanca Rı´os-Touma, Francisco Cuesta, Ralph Holzenthal. Data curation: Blanca Rı´os-Touma, Francisco Cuesta, Ernesto Ra´zuri-Gonzales, Ralph Holzenthal. Formal analysis: Blanca Rı´os-Touma, Francisco Cuesta, Ernesto Ra´zuri-Gonzales. Funding acquisition: Blanca Rı´os-Touma, Francisco Cuesta, Ralph Holzenthal. PLOS ONE Elevational biodiversity gradients of Neotropical caddisflies PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272229 August 5, 2022 13 / 17