Identifying the Drivers of Spatial Taxonomic and Functional Beta-Diversity of British Breeding Birds

Spatial variation in community composition may be driven by a variety of processes, including environmental filtering and dispersal limitation. While work has been conducted on the relative importance of these processes on various taxa and at varying resolutions, tests using high-resolution empirical data across large spatial extents are sparse. Here, we use a dataset on the presence/absence of breeding bird species collected at the 10 km × 10 km scale across the whole of Britain. Pairwise spatial taxonomic and functional beta diversity, and the constituent components of each (turnover and nestedness/richness loss or gain), were calculated alongside two other measures of functional change (mean nearest taxon distance and mean pairwise distance). Predictor variables included climate and land use measures, as well as a measure of elevation, human influence, and habitat diversity. Generalized dissimilarity modeling was used to analyze the contribution of each predictor variable to variation in the different beta diversity metrics. Overall, we found that there was a moderate and unique proportion of the variance explained by geographical distance per se, which could highlight the role of dispersal limitation in community dissimilarity. Climate, land use, and human influence all also contributed to the observed patterns, but a large proportion of the explained variance in beta diversity was shared between these variables and geographical distance. However, both taxonomic nestedness and functional nestedness were uniquely predicted by a combination of land use, human influence, elevation, and climate variables, indicating a key role for environmental filtering. These findings may have important conservation implications in the face of a warming climate and future land use change.

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Effects of environmental filtering and dispersal limitation on species and phylogenetic beta diversity in Gutianshan National Nature Reserve

Chinese Science Bulletin (Chinese Version) ◽

10.1360/972012-1582 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 58 (13) ◽

pp. 1204-1212

Author(s):

MiDe RAO ◽

XiangCheng MI ◽

JinLong ZHANG ◽

JianHua CHEN ◽

Gang FENG

Keyword(s):

Beta Diversity ◽

Nature Reserve ◽

Environmental Filtering ◽

Dispersal Limitation ◽

National Nature Reserve

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Environmental filtering and dispersal limitation jointly shaped the taxonomic and phylogenetic beta diversity of natural forests in southern China

Ecology and Evolution ◽

10.1002/ece3.7711 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Wei Shi ◽

Yong‐Qiang Wang ◽

Wu‐Sheng Xiang ◽

Xian‐Kun Li ◽

Kun‐Fang Cao

Keyword(s):

Beta Diversity ◽

Southern China ◽

Environmental Filtering ◽

Dispersal Limitation ◽

Natural Forests

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Characteristics and driving mechanisms of species beta diversity in desert plant communities

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0245249 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. e0245249

Author(s):

Lamei Jiang ◽

Guanghui Lv ◽

Yanming Gong ◽

Yan Li ◽

Hengfang Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Environmental Factors ◽

Plant Community ◽

Plant Communities ◽

Beta Diversity ◽

Environmental Filtering ◽

Dispersal Limitation ◽

Life Forms ◽

Desert Ecosystem ◽

Spatial Distance ◽

Β Diversity

Species dissimilarity (beta diversity) primarily reflects the spatio–temporal changes in the species composition of a plant community. The correlations between β diversity and environmental factors and spatial distance can be used to explain the magnitudes of environmental filtering and dispersal. However, little is known about the relative roles and importance of neutral and niche-related factors in the assemblage of plant communities with different life forms in deserts. We found that in desert ecosystems, the β diversity of herbaceous plants was the highest, followed by that of shrubs and trees. The changes in the β diversity of herbs and shrubs had stronger correlations with the environment, indicating that community aggregation was strongly affected by niche processes. The soil water content and salt content were the key environmental factors affecting species distributions of the herb and shrub layers, respectively. Spatial distance explained a larger amount of the variation in tree composition, indicating that dispersal limitation was the main factor affecting the construction of the tree layer community. The results suggest that different life forms may determine the association between organisms and the environment. These findings suggest that the spatial patterns of plant community species in the Ebinur Lake desert ecosystem are the result of the combined effects of environmental filtering and dispersal limitation.

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Environmental Filtering Process Has More Important Roles than Dispersal Limitation in Shaping Large-Scale Prokaryotic Beta Diversity Patterns of Grassland Soils

Microbial Ecology ◽

10.1007/s00248-016-0762-4 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 72 (1) ◽

pp. 221-230 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Peng Cao ◽

Jun-Tao Wang ◽

Hang-Wei Hu ◽

Yuan-Ming Zheng ◽

Yuan Ge ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Beta Diversity ◽

Large Scale ◽

Environmental Filtering ◽

Dispersal Limitation ◽

Grassland Soils ◽

Diversity Patterns

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Land Use and Watersheds: Human Influence on Hydrology and Geomorphology in Urban and Forest Areas

10.1029/ws002 ◽

2001 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Human Influence

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Local-scale determinants of arboreal spider beta diversity in a temperate forest: roles of tree architecture, spatial distance, and dispersal capacity

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.5596 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

pp. e5596 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Qiongdao Zhang ◽

Dong He ◽

Hua Wu ◽

Wei Shi ◽

Cong Chen

Keyword(s):

Beta Diversity ◽

Environmental Gradient ◽

Dispersal Limitation ◽

Local Scale ◽

Tree Architecture ◽

Habitat Specialization ◽

Spatial Distance ◽

Species Variation ◽

Dispersal Capacity ◽

Canopy Volume

Spiders are a functionally important taxon in forest ecosystems, but the determinants of arboreal spider beta diversity are poorly understood at the local scale. We examined spider assemblages in 324 European beech (Fagus sylvatica) trees of varying sizes across three forest stands in Würzburg (Germany) to disentangle the roles of tree architecture, spatial distance, and dispersal capacity on spider turnover across individual trees. A large proportion of tree pairs (66%) showed higher compositional dissimilarity in spider assemblages than expected by chance, suggesting prominent roles of habitat specialization and/or dispersal limitation. Trees with higher dissimilarity in DBH and canopy volume, and to a lesser extent in foliage cover, supported more dissimilar spider assemblages, suggesting that tree architecture comprised a relevant environmental gradient of sorting spider species. Variation partitioning revealed that 28.4% of the variation in beta diversity was jointly explained by tree architecture, spatial distance (measured by principal coordinates of neighbor matrices) and dispersal capacity (quantified by ballooning propensity). Among these, dispersal capacity accounted for a comparable proportion as spatial distance did (6.8% vs. 5.9%). Beta diversity did not significantly differ between high- and low-vagility groups, but beta diversity in species with high vagility was more strongly determined by spatially structured environmental variation. Altogether, both niche specialization, along the environmental gradient defined by tree architecture, and dispersal limitation are responsible for structuring arboreal spider assemblages. High dispersal capacity of spiders appears to reinforce the role of niche-related processes.

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Environment drives high phylogenetic turnover among oceanic bacterial communities

Biology Letters ◽

10.1098/rsbl.2011.0990 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 8 (4) ◽

pp. 562-566 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Thomas Pommier ◽

Emmanuel J. P. Douzery ◽

David Mouillot

Keyword(s):

Bacterial Communities ◽

Environmental Gradient ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Environmental Filtering ◽

Species Level ◽

Geographical Distance ◽

Abiotic Conditions ◽

High Connectivity ◽

Phylogenetic Lineages ◽

Marine Microbial Communities

Although environmental filtering has been observed to influence the biodiversity patterns of marine bacterial communities, it was restricted to the regional scale and to the species level, leaving the main drivers unknown at large biogeographic scales and higher taxonomic levels. Bacterial communities with different species compositions may nevertheless share phylogenetic lineages, and phylogenetic turnover (PT) among those communities may be surprisingly low along any biogeographic or environmental gradient. Here, we investigated the relative influence of environmental filtering and geographical distance on the PT between marine bacterial communities living more than 8000 km apart in contrasted abiotic conditions. PT was high between communities and was more structured by local environmental factors than by geographical distance, suggesting the predominance of a lineage filtering process. Strong phenotype-environment mismatches observed in the ocean may surpass high connectivity between marine microbial communities.

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Assembly processes of gastropod community change with horizontal and vertical zonation in ancient Lake Ohrid: a metacommunity speciation perspective

Biogeosciences ◽

10.5194/bg-13-2901-2016 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 13 (10) ◽

pp. 2901-2911 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Torsten Hauffe ◽

Christian Albrecht ◽

Thomas Wilke

Keyword(s):

Community Composition ◽

Community Assembly ◽

Environmental Filtering ◽

Dispersal Limitation ◽

Species Interaction ◽

Relative Importance ◽

Lake Depth ◽

Ancient Lake ◽

Lake Ohrid ◽

Speciation Model

Abstract. The Balkan Lake Ohrid is the oldest and most diverse freshwater lacustrine system in Europe. However, it remains unclear whether species community composition, as well as the diversification of its endemic taxa, is mainly driven by dispersal limitation, environmental filtering, or species interaction. This calls for a holistic perspective involving both evolutionary processes and ecological dynamics, as provided by the unifying framework of the “metacommunity speciation model”.The current study used the species-rich model taxon Gastropoda to assess how extant communities in Lake Ohrid are structured by performing process-based metacommunity analyses. Specifically, the study aimed (1) to identifying the relative importance of the three community assembly processes and (2) to test whether the importance of these individual processes changes gradually with lake depth or discontinuously with eco-zone shifts.Based on automated eco-zone detection and process-specific simulation steps, we demonstrated that dispersal limitation had the strongest influence on gastropod community composition. However, it was not the exclusive assembly process, but acted together with the other two processes – environmental filtering and species interaction. The relative importance of the community assembly processes varied both with lake depth and eco-zones, though the processes were better predicted by the latter.This suggests that environmental characteristics have a pronounced effect on shaping gastropod communities via assembly processes. Moreover, the study corroborated the high importance of dispersal limitation for both maintaining species richness in Lake Ohrid (through its impact on community composition) and generating endemic biodiversity (via its influence on diversification processes). However, according to the metacommunity speciation model, the inferred importance of environmental filtering and biotic interaction also suggests a small but significant influence of ecological speciation. These findings contribute to the main goal of the Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation Conditions in Lake Ohrid (SCOPSCO) deep drilling initiative – inferring the drivers of biotic evolution – and might provide an integrative perspective on biological and limnological dynamics in ancient Lake Ohrid.

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Characteristics of the butterflies on various forms of land uses

Ochrona Srodowiska i Zasobów Naturalnych ◽

10.2478/oszn-2019-0012 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (3) ◽

pp. 15-22

Author(s):

Katarzyna Szyszko-Podgórska

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Economic Activity ◽

Forest Site ◽

Fallow Land ◽

Land Uses ◽

Human Influence ◽

Numerous Species ◽

Number Of Species ◽

Human Economic Activity ◽

Trees And Shrubs

Abstract The purpose of the work was to identify the occurrence of butterflies depending on landform uses and human influence on the population domination structure. The research was conducted in the ‘Krzywda’ field-and-forest Site occupying 172 ha. The area consists of the land leaving in fallow, meadows and wasteland including about 68 ha of swamps that are strongly eutrophic due to human economic activity. The area is subjected to artificial succession inhibition processes in the form of mowing and cutting of trees and shrubs. 32 species of butterflies were recorded during the research, that is, 20% of all species within this group occurring in Poland. The research has approved the great spatial and quantitative diversification of the occurring area of butterflies depending on the form of the land uses. The greatest number of species and their greatest populations were found in the land laying in fallow without the removal of the biomass. The least number of species and their specimens were collected in the unmown laying fallow land. Lycaena virgaureae was the most numerous species collected. The correct domination structure characterized by a small number of numerous species and a large number of species consisting of a low number of specimens. Processes observed in the studied Site subjected to various types of land use influence the occurrence diversity of this group of insects.

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