Diet and locomotion, but not body size, differentiate mammal communities in worldwide tropical ecosystems

Abstract

Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. To test whether tropical habitat groups across the world can be differentiated by using 25 taxon-free mammalian community structures and to discuss the implications of this 26 analysis for palaeoecological community studies. 27 28 Materials and Methods 29We used mammalian community data for 169 localities, which were assigned a priori to 30 hierarchical Olson (1983) vegetation categories. Species over 500 g were classified into 31 dietary, locomotion, and body mass groups and the resulting group structures were 32 analysed using community structure analyses (NPMANOVA, CAP, SIMPER). 33 34 Results 35The test results show that the mammalian community structures are significantly different 36 between all of Olson's categories. These differences are highest at Olson's major and 37 minor ecosystem levels, and require the least number of variable categories. At the 38 vegetation level, the number of variable categories required to distinguish between them 39 becomes higher. Of the dietary groups, the number of frugivore-granivores, frugivore-40 omnivores, grazers and mixed feeders contribute most to these differences, while the 41 number of arboreal, arboreal-terrestrial and subterranean-terrestrial species are the key 42 locomotor groups. Body mass was not a good discriminator. 43 44 Main conclusions 45As general ecosystem categories are broken down into more precisely defined habitats, it 46 3 requires more detailed knowledge of the species adaptations to distinguish between them. 47Many of Olson's vegetation groups represent a continuum of cover that are, at least at the 48 worldwide comparison, too detailed to differentiate when broad generalities are sought. We 49 suggest using three worldwide tropical major ecosystems in mammalian community 50 structure analyses: "Humid, closed forests", "Seasonal or interrupted forests and 51 grasslands", and "Seasonal, open drylands". Our results also demonstrate that community 52 structures defined by both dietary and locomotor adaptations are powerful discriminators 53 of tropical ecosystems and habitats across the continents we examined, but body mass 54 should be interpreted with caution when the research question pertains to multiple 55 continents.

Metabarcoding reveals diet diversity in an ungulate community in Thailand

“…However, wild pig and muntjac were poorly sampled in this study and any definitive conclusion about their diet is not possible. Our data do support herbivore community studies that indicate feeding mode, and not body size or phylogeny determine niche breadth (Bagchi et al, ; Kartzinel et al, ; Lintulawkso & Kovarovic, ; Pansu et al, ).…”

What are the best modern analogs for ancient South American mammal communities? Evidence from ecological diversity analysis (EDA)

“…Correspondence analysis is an exploratory technique used to visualize trends and groupings in a multivariate dataset (Hammer and Harper, 2006;LeGendre and LeGendre, 2012). In our study, the CA plotted faunas and ecological variables in the same space and maintained correspondence between the two, permitting ecological variables most highly associated with particular faunas to be determined.…”

“…This is an arbitrary threshold based on the observation that most terrestrial mammal faunas include at least 30 species (incudling a variable proportion of volant mammals; Ceballos and Ehrlich, 2006; see also Mares and Willig, 1994), and that most well-sampled South American fossil localities include at least 20 species (Croft, 2006). As with other ecological diversity analyses (e.g., Reed, 1998;Kay and Madden 1997a, b;Kovarovic et al, 2002;Mendoza et al, 2004;Louys et al, 2011;Lintulaakso and Kovarovic, 2016), volant mammals (i.e., bats, order Chiroptera) and fully aquatic mammals (i.e., manatees/dugongs and whales, order Sirenia and infraoder Cetacea, respectively) were excluded from our analyses.…”

“…In theory, an EDA of any fauna for which the ecological characteristics of its species can be determined should faithfully reflect the habitat in which those species were living. Ecological diversity analysis was originally developed and applied to late Cenozoic homininbearing sites in Africa (e.g., Andrews and Lord, 1979;Van Couvering 1980), but the technique has also been used to reconstruct South American paleohabitats (e.g., Kay and Madden, 1997a, b;Flynn et al, 2003;Croft et al, 2008;Kay et al, 2012;Lintulaakso and Kovarovic, 2016). The study of these geologically older South American mammal faunas comes with a formidable set of challenges due to the continent's biogeographic history.…”

“…Croft and Townsend, 2005). Even though general resemblances in community structure may be sufficient for reconstructing paleohabitat (e.g., Kay and Madden, 1997a, b;Flynn et al, 2003;Croft et al, 2008), limiting the modern comparative dataset to the same biogeographic realm may preclude a more nuanced interpretation of community structure (Lintulaakso and Kovarovic, 2016).…”