A comparison of conventional methods and mosquito blood meal analysis to assess vertebrate diversity

Abstract

Global biodiversity is declining at alarming rates, necessitating efficient and scalable biodiversity monitoring methods. This study evaluated the efficacy and efficiency of using mosquito blood meal analysis (MBA) as a tool to survey terrestrial vertebrate assemblages during wet and dry seasons in a subtropical landscape of central Florida. We compared the performance of MBA against that of a suite of conventional sampling methods for birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles. As a single method, MBA detected the highest number of species. Nonetheless, our results indicated that during the dry season, conventional methods were more effective and efficient than MBA, particularly for detecting small mammals and ectotherms. Similarly, in the wet season, conventional methods outperformed MBA in assessing the diversity of individual guilds. Nonetheless, during this season, MBA performance was comparable to that of the conventional techniques when the goal was to assess the entire vertebrate diversity. This is likely due to the higher abundance of adult mosquitoes in the landscape during the wet season. A community similarity analysis showed that MBA and conventional methods obtained different profiles of the vertebrate assemblages. Each method seemed to perform better for dissimilar sets of species. These findings highlight the potential of MBA as a scalable biodiversity monitoring tool, particularly as complementary to conventional methods, or stand-alone method under some environmental conditions. These results could also aid in identifying vertebrate species suitable to be surveyed using MBA.