Discussion
Our primary goal was to assess the interplay between
extinction-recolonization dynamics on the one hand, versus isolation and
local adaptation on the other, in shaping the dynamics of arthropod
communities across a naturally fragmented landscape. Using metabarcoding
of whole arthropod communities in kīpuka of different size, we found
that forest-specialist arthropods have been isolated by kīpuka
fragmentation to the extent that we can detect that they have
genetically differentiated over a 150 year timescale. However, we
simultaneously used this dataset to demonstrate that species distributed
across the kīpuka system have differentiated in entirely different
biological communities from one another– suggesting how kīpuka might
drive local adaptation to different biotic environments.