The US National Park Service has called for the establishment of All Taxa Biodiversity Inventories (ATBIs) as part of its Centennial Challenge Initiative.  The goals of these surveys include cataloging taxa in the parks, discovering new species, and understanding ecological patterns of species distribution.  The first ATBI, conducted in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, was successful at cataloguing taxa present and discovering new species; however, the data have not yet been used to test ecological questions.  Here, we use available ATBI data to assess ecological patterns related to congruence between different taxonomic levels, between functional groups and between rates of spatial turnover.

Results/Conclusions

Our analyses reveal significant correlations between richness at different trophic levels, between spatial turnover of different taxonomic groups, and between species richness and richness at higher taxonomic levels. In addition, we use a Maxent modeling approach to show a significant correlation between modeled and observed vegetation and arthropod richness. However, the current ATBI dataset is limited in its ability to make ecological inferences due to the non-standardized, taxonomy-oriented approach used in data collection. Our call for ecologically meaningful ATBI data was echoed during interviews we conducted with National Park representatives; interviewees unanimously cited ecological information (such as how climate change might affect species composition) as a key ATBI outcome. Thus, we also suggest pragmatic changes in data collection methods to improve the ability of future ATBIs to answer ecological questions.