Beta‐diversity in temperate and tropical forests reflects dissimilar mechanisms of community assembly

Myers, Jonathan A.; Chase, Jonathan M.; Jiménez, Iván; Jørgensen, Peter M.; Araujo‐Murakami, Alejandro; Zambrana, Narel Y. Paniagua; Seidel, Renate

doi:10.1111/ele.12021

Cited by 403 publications

(533 citation statements)

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“…These findings seemingly contradict those of Myers et al [32], who showed that environmental factors played a stronger role in driving species turnover in a temperate compared with a tropical region. Our results may differ because of the different taxa among the two studies, i.e.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 94%

Species richness and biomass explain spatial turnover in ecosystem functioning across tropical and temperate ecosystems

Barnes

Weigelt

Eisenhauer

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 17 to a theme issue 'Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in dynamic landscapes'. Predicting ecosystem functioning at large spatial scales rests on our ability to scale up from local plots to landscapes, but this is highly contingent on our understanding of how functioning varies through space. Such an understanding has been hampered by a strong experimental focus of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research restricted to small spatial scales. To address this limitation, we investigate the drivers of spatial variation in multitrophic energy flux-a measure of ecosystem functioning in complex communities-at the landscape scale. We use a structural equation modelling framework based on distance matrices to test how spatial and environmental distances drive variation in community energy flux via four mechanisms: species composition, species richness, niche complementarity and biomass. We found that in both a tropical and a temperate study region, geographical and environmental distance indirectly influence species richness and biomass, with clear evidence that these are the dominant mechanisms explaining variability in community energy flux over spatial and environmental gradients. Our results reveal that species composition and trait variability may become redundant in predicting ecosystem functioning at the landscape scale. Instead, we demonstrate that species richness and total biomass may best predict rates of ecosystem functioning at larger spatial scales.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 94%

Species richness and biomass explain spatial turnover in ecosystem functioning across tropical and temperate ecosystems

Barnes

Weigelt

Eisenhauer

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Testing predictions regarding how seed dispersal should influence patterns of seedling species turnover among gaps has proven difficult, since beta diversity varies substantially among forests and at different spatial scales (2,40). Studies suggest that dispersal should decrease species turnover among sites by moving propagules greater distances and reducing the spatial aggregation of species, leading to less clumped distributions (2, 4, 40), but there have been no empirical tests of this for plants.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seed dispersal increases local species richness and reduces spatial turnover of tropical tree seedlings

Wandrag

Dunham

Duncan

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Dispersal is thought to be a key process underlying the high spatial diversity of tropical forests. Just how important dispersal is in structuring plant communities is nevertheless an open question because it is very difficult to isolate dispersal from other processes, and thereby measure its effect. Using a unique situation, the loss of vertebrate seed dispersers on the island of Guam and their presence on the neighboring islands of Saipan and Rota, we quantify the contribution of vertebrate seed dispersal to spatial patterns of diversity of tree seedlings in treefall gaps. The presence of vertebrate seed dispersers approximately doubled seedling species richness within canopy gaps and halved species turnover among gaps. Our study demonstrates that dispersal plays a key role in maintaining local and regional patterns of diversity, and highlights the potential for ongoing declines in vertebrate seed dispersers to profoundly alter tropical forest composition.biodiversity loss | biotic homogenization | frugivory | mutualisms | tropical conservation T ropical forests typically have both high numbers of species per unit area and highly variable patterns of community composition through space (1, 2). Dispersal is thought to be a key process underlying this diversity, contributing to high local species richness by allowing the seeds arriving at a site to be drawn from a wide species pool (3, 4) and influencing the spatial arrangement of species by moving seeds away from parent trees, reducing conspecific aggregation (4-8). However, it has proven extremely difficult to quantify the contribution of seed dispersal to local diversity and spatial patterning in forests because it is confounded with other processes, including environmental variation, to which species differentially respond (2, 9); historical legacies, such as past disturbance (10); other biotic interactions, such as competition and predation (11, 12); and stochastic variation (13). Isolating the role of seed dispersal in maintaining diversity in tropical forests has nevertheless taken on new urgency due to widespread declines in populations of vertebrate dispersers throughout tropical regions (14-17). If vertebrate seed dispersal contributes substantially to the diversity and spatial patterning of trees in tropical forests, then declining vertebrate populations could lead to irrevocable changes in forest composition and structure.To separate the role of dispersal from other processes structuring tree communities, we would ideally manipulate dispersal while keeping other factors constant. For vertebrate dispersal, one approach would be to remove populations of vertebrate dispersers in treatment areas and compare these with untreated areas. However, vertebrate dispersal can occur over long distances (often up to several kilometers) (18), which requires manipulating vertebrate densities over areas larger than is logistically or ethically feasible. To overcome this, studies have used large-scale, unplanned manipulations (19) of vertebrate populations, comparing,...

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“…Researchers have observed a greater than expected intraspecific spatial aggregation of tree species in several recent studies from different regions (e.g., De Cáceres et al 2012;Kraft et al 2011;Mori et al 2013). Myers et al (2013) explained how the local ecological mechanisms that cause intraspecific aggregation observed across regions can vary widely between different biogeographical regions (i.e., tropical vs. temperate forests). To quantify the relative contributions of spaceand environment-based assembly processes, their study relied on the null model proposed by Kraft et al (2011).…”

Section: Abundance-driven Sampling Effectsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Recently, after carefully disentangling the spatial and environmental factors that contribute to β-diversity, Myers et al (2013) found that tree communities in tropical and temperate forests are most influenced by dispersal limitations and environmental filtering, respectively. Researchers have observed a greater than expected intraspecific spatial aggregation of tree species in several recent studies from different regions (e.g., De Cáceres et al 2012;Kraft et al 2011;Mori et al 2013).…”

Section: Abundance-driven Sampling Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the substantial effects of γ-diversity on observed patterns of biodiversity (Anderson et al 2010;Carstensen et al 2013), novel approaches such as Kraft et al's (2011) model are essential. Indeed, their null model based on abundance has potential for tackling unsolved issues in community ecology (De Cáceres et al 2012;Mori et al 2013;Myers et al 2013;Stegen et al 2013). However, the research in Kraft et al (2011) has been criticized (Qian et al 2012;Tuomisto and Ruokolainen 2012), in part for a potential problem in their null model (Qian et al 2013).…”

Section: Abundance-driven Sampling Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Null model approaches to evaluating the relative role of different assembly processes in shaping ecological communities

et al. 2014

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Various local processes simultaneously shape ecological assemblages. β-diversity is a useful metric for inferring the underlying mechanisms of community assembly. However, β-diversity is not independent of γ-diversity, which may mask the local mechanisms that govern community processes across regions. Recent approaches that rely on an abundance-based null model could solve this sampling issue. However, if abundance varies widely across a region, the relative roles of deterministic and stochastic processes may be substantially misestimated. Furthermore, there is additional uncertainty as to whether null models used to correct γ-dependence in β-diversity should be independent of the observed patterns of species abundance distributions or whether the models should reflect these patterns. Here, we aim to test what null models with various constraints imply about the underlying processes shaping β-diversity. First, we found that an abundance-driven sampling effect could substantially influence the calculation of γ-corrected β-diversity. Second, we found that the null models that preserve the species abundance patterns could better reflect empirical patterns of spatial organization of individuals. The different implications generated from different applications of the null model approach therefore suggest that there are still frontiers regarding how local processes that shape species assemblages should be quantified. Carefully exploring each facet within different assembly processes is important.

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Beta‐diversity in temperate and tropical forests reflects dissimilar mechanisms of community assembly

Cited by 403 publications

References 50 publications

Species richness and biomass explain spatial turnover in ecosystem functioning across tropical and temperate ecosystems

Species richness and biomass explain spatial turnover in ecosystem functioning across tropical and temperate ecosystems

Seed dispersal increases local species richness and reduces spatial turnover of tropical tree seedlings

Null model approaches to evaluating the relative role of different assembly processes in shaping ecological communities

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