A meta‐analysis of nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity across organisms and ecosystems

Abstract

Aim: The number of studies investigating the nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity has increased substantially, but our general understanding of the drivers of turnover and nestedness remains elusive. Here, we examined the effects of species traits, spatial extent, latitude and ecosystem type on the nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity. Location: Global.Time period: 1968-2017.Major taxa studied: From bacteria to mammals. Methods:From the 99 studies that partition total beta diversity into its turnover and nestedness components, we assembled 269 and 259 data points for the pairwise and multiple site betadiversity metrics, respectively. Our data covered a broad variation in species dispersal type, body size and trophic position. The data were from freshwater, marine and terrestrial realms, and encompassed geographical areas from the tropics to near polar regions. We used linear modelling as a meta-regression tool to analyse the data.Results: Pairwise turnover, multiple site turnover and total beta diversity all decreased significantly with latitude. In contrast, multiple site nestedness showed a positive relationship with latitude. Beta-diversity components did not generally differ among the realms. The turnover component and total beta diversity increased with spatial extent, whereas nestedness was scale invariant for pairwise metrics. Multiple site beta-diversity components did not vary with spatial extent. Surprisingly, passively dispersed organisms had lower turnover and total beta diversity than flying organisms. Body size showed a relatively weak relationship with beta diversity but had important interactions with trophic position, thus also affecting beta diversity via interactive effects. Producers had significantly higher average pairwise turnover and total beta diversity than carnivores. Main conclusions:The present results provide evidence that species turnover, being consistently the larger component of total beta diversity, and nestedness are related to the latitude of the study area and intrinsic organismal features. We showed that two beta-diversity components had generally opposing patterns with regard to latitude. We highlight that beta-diversity partition may give additional insights into the underlying causes of spatial variability in biotic communities compared with total beta diversity alone. K E Y W O R D Sbiodiversity, body size, dispersal, global, macroecology, meta-analysis, nestedness, turnover 96 |

Incorporating phylogenetic metrics to microbial co‐occurrence networks based on amplicon sequences to discern community assembly processes

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“…Such a low effect of dispersal limitation is typical for organisms with large populations, small body size and high rates of passive dispersal, particularly in local sampling areas (Finlay, ; Martiny et al, ; Ramette & Tiedje, ). However, in heterogeneous ecosystems (as is the case of our patchy landscapes) microbial communities, in spite of their efficient dispersal abilities, can show a high turnover across plots due to local environmental filtering (Soininen et al, ).…”

Lake and catchment‐scale determinants of aquatic vegetation across almost 1,000 lakes and the contrasts between lake types

“…In our work, β turnover (0.6–0.8, Figure c) caused by compositional change, was the dominant component of macrophyte beta‐diversity patterns, rather than β nestedness (0.05–0.15, Figure b) based on differences in richness. This conclusion is consistent with most partitioning studies on beta diversity, indicating that species sorting plays a vital role in assembling macrophyte communities (Hill, Heino, Thornhill, Ryves, & Wood, ; Soininen, Heino, & Wang, ).…”

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