A Novel Multiscale Assessment of Community Assembly across Time, Space, and Functional Niche

Meachen, Julie; Roberts, Trina E.

doi:10.1086/675758

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Thus, in sympatry, marten and fisher niches overlap in respect to the elevations, temperatures and habitats they use, their diets, the snowpack they can tolerate, and amount of precipitation. This pattern of niche similarity was also reported by Manlick (2015) for these species in Wisconsin, but also finds exceptions in the study of guilds of carnivores elsewhere (Dayan and Simberloff 1996;Meachen and Roberts 2014).…”

Section: Niche Partitioningsupporting

confidence: 85%

Niche overlap of competing carnivores across climatic gradients and the conservation implications of climate change at geographic range margins

Zielinski¹,

Tucker²,

Rennie³

2017

Biological Conservation

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1 Co-first authors.There is considerable interest in factors controlling "warm-edge" limitsthe lower elevation and latitudinal edges of a species' range. Understanding whether conservation measures can mitigate anticipated change in climate requires consideration of future climate as well as species interactions. We explored niche relations of martens and fishers at their southern range margins to understand their spatial and temporal dynamics, and how they may be affected by climate change. We used large-scale non-invasive surveys and home range data from radio-marked individuals to explore the spatial dynamics of each species. Marten and fisher were allopatric in the northern/wetter regions but sympatric at intermediate latitudes with lower precipitation. In the driest/southernmost region only fishers occurred. Martens were not detected when annual precipitation was < 900 mm and rare where minimum temperatures exceeded 4ºC. Fishers were absent where spring snow was > 650 mm. Classification trees, accounting for multivariate interactions, supported these results. Where sympatric, ~70% of a marten's home range overlapped with at least one fisher but martens tended to avoid this area. In sympatry, marten expanded their niche into areas with reduced snowpack, warmer temperatures and uncharacteristic lower elevation habitats. Future climate scenarios predict conditions that favor fishers, but our data suggest martens may be capable of shifting their niche somewhat to warmer and less snowy habitats. The conservation of interacting species at their warm range limits will require land managers be aware of interspecific tolerance, how each may respond uniquely to future climates, and how potential climate refugia can be integrated with existing habitat.Understanding the causes of shifts in range limits is a fundamental issue for ecology and conservation (Sexton et al. 2009). Range limits can be a testing ground to understand the environmental conditions to which populations can adapt (Brown et al. 1996, Sexton et al. 2009 and the conditions that we need to preserve and connect as climate changes. "Warm-edge" limits the margins of a species' range that are closest to the equator or at the species' lower elevational limitsare very likely to be affected by climate change and biotic factors such as competition for resources and predation that accompany these changes (Cahill et al. 2014, Louthan et al. 2015. Consequently, predicting how range limits might respond to climate change requires evaluation of both climatic factors and species interactions.North American martens (Martes americana and M.caurina) and the fisher (Pekania pennanti) are good subjects for the study of distributional patterns because important biotic and abiotic effects on their geographic ranges have previously been explored. Additionally, both species are the focus of conservation concerns with the southern Sierra Nevada fisher population under consideration as a threatened species at both the state and federal level, and marten designated a sensitive s...

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Section: Niche Partitioningsupporting

confidence: 85%

Niche overlap of competing carnivores across climatic gradients and the conservation implications of climate change at geographic range margins

Zielinski¹,

Tucker²,

Rennie³

2017

Biological Conservation

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“…The potential to predict emergent species- and community-level patterns and processes from functional traits is of great ecological and evolutionary interest [ 1 – 3 ]. For example, which traits cause some species to be more widespread and last longer than others?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. and evolutionary interest [1][2][3]. For example, which traits cause some species to be more widespread and last longer than others?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dietary specialization is linked to reduced species durations in North American fossil canids

2018

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How traits influence species persistence is a fundamental question in ecology, evolution and palaeontology. We test the relationship between dietary traits and both species duration and locality coverage over 40 million years in North American canids, a clade with considerable ecomorphological disparity and a dense fossil record. Because ecomorphological generalization—broad resource use—may enable species to withstand disturbance, we predicted that canids of average size and mesocarnivory would exhibit longer durations and wider distributions than specialized larger or smaller species. Second, because locality coverage might reflect dispersal ability and/or survivability in a range of habitats, we predicted that high coverage would correspond with longer durations. We find a nonlinear relationship between species duration and degree of carnivory: species at either end of the carnivory spectrum tend to have shorter durations than mesocarnivores. Locality coverage shows no relationship with size, diet or duration. To test whether generalization (medium size, mesocarnivory) corresponds to an adaptive optimum, we fit trait evolution models to previously generated canid phylogenies. Our analyses identify no single optimum in size or diet. Instead, the primary model of size evolution is a classic Cope's Rule increase over time, while dietary evolution does not conform to a single model.

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“…3, 2015 Similarly, species' individualistic responses to deglacial climatic change drove the formation of no-analog mammal associations (Graham 2005). The Quaternary paleobiological record thus illustrates the fragility of communities as conservation units and the importance of extrinsic, abiotic factors in driving community assembly (Meachen & Roberts 2014).…”

Section: Ecological Noveltymentioning

confidence: 99%

A 2.5-million-year perspective on coarse-filter strategies for conserving nature's stage

Gill

Blois

Benito

et al. 2015

Conservation Biology

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Climate change will require novel conservation strategies. One such tactic is a coarse-filter approach that focuses on conserving nature's stage (CNS) rather than the actors (individual species). However, there is a temporal mismatch between the long-term goals of conservation and the short-term nature of most ecological studies, which leaves many assumptions untested. Paleoecology provides a valuable perspective on coarse-filter strategies by marshaling the natural experiments of the past to contextualize extinction risk due to the emerging impacts of climate change and anthropogenic threats. We reviewed examples from the paleoecological record that highlight the strengths, opportunities, and caveats of a CNS approach. We focused on the near-time geological past of the Quaternary, during which species were subjected to widespread changes in climate and concomitant changes in the physical environment in general. Species experienced a range of individualistic responses to these changes, including community turnover and novel associations, extinction and speciation, range shifts, changes in local richness and evenness, and both equilibrium and disequilibrium responses. Due to the dynamic nature of species responses to Quaternary climate change, a coarse-filter strategy may be appropriate for many taxa because it can accommodate dynamic processes. However, conservationists should also consider that the persistence of landforms varies across space and time, which could have potential long-term consequences for geodiversity and thus biodiversity.

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A Novel Multiscale Assessment of Community Assembly across Time, Space, and Functional Niche

Cited by 5 publications

References 58 publications

Niche overlap of competing carnivores across climatic gradients and the conservation implications of climate change at geographic range margins

Niche overlap of competing carnivores across climatic gradients and the conservation implications of climate change at geographic range margins

Dietary specialization is linked to reduced species durations in North American fossil canids

A 2.5-million-year perspective on coarse-filter strategies for conserving nature's stage

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