Patterns of functional diversity across an extensive environmental gradient: vertebrate consumers, hidden treatments and latitudinal trends

Stevens, Richard D.; Cox, Stephen B.; Strauss, Richard E.; Willig, Michael R.

doi:10.1046/j.1461-0248.2003.00541.x

Cited by 169 publications

(202 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Previous studies on bat and avian assemblages have shown lower FD within local assemblages than expected by chance [41,43]. This study does not uniformly support these results on a continental scale for large carnivores.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 91%

Phylogenetic and functional diversity in large carnivore assemblages

Dalerum

2013

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Large terrestrial carnivores are important ecological components and prominent flagship species, but are often extinction prone owing to a combination of biological traits and high levels of human persecution. This study combines phylogenetic and functional diversity evaluations of global and continental large carnivore assemblages to provide a framework for conservation prioritization both between and within assemblages. Species-rich assemblages of large carnivores simultaneously had high phylogenetic and functional diversity, but species contributions to phylogenetic and functional diversity components were not positively correlated. The results further provide ecological justification for the largest carnivore species as a focus for conservation action, and suggests that range contraction is a likely cause of diminishing carnivore ecosystem function. This study highlights that preserving species-rich carnivore assemblages will capture both high phylogenetic and functional diversity, but that prioritizing species within assemblages will involve trade-offs between optimizing contemporary ecosystem function versus the evolutionary potential for future ecosystem performance.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 91%

Phylogenetic and functional diversity in large carnivore assemblages

Dalerum

2013

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…For example, fish assemblages in Europe and North America have consistent trait-based responses to hydrologic variability, supporting a significant degree of convergent evolution of the species pools and consistent niche assembly [79]. Trait diversity in bat assemblages decreases with latitude and is highly dependent on regional diversity [80]. In Mediterranean shrublands, mean plant traits change with successional age [41].…”

Section: Recent Advances (A) Changes In Vocabularymentioning

confidence: 93%

Advances, challenges and a developing synthesis of ecological community assembly theory

Weiher

Freund

Bunton

et al. 2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

545

564

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Ecological approaches to community assembly have emphasized the interplay between neutral processes, niche-based environmental filtering and niche-based species sorting in an interactive milieu. Recently, progress has been made in terms of aligning our vocabulary with conceptual advances, assessing how trait-based community functional parameters differ from neutral expectation and assessing how traits vary along environmental gradients. Experiments have confirmed the influence of these processes on assembly and have addressed the role of dispersal in shaping local assemblages. Community phylogenetics has forged common ground between ecologists and biogeographers, but it is not a proxy for trait-based approaches. Community assembly theory is in need of a comparative synthesis that addresses how the relative importance of niche and neutral processes varies among taxa, along environmental gradients, and across scales. Towards that goal, we suggest a set of traits that probably confer increasing community neutrality and regionality and review the influences of stress, disturbance and scale on the importance of niche assembly. We advocate increasing the complexity of experiments in order to assess the relative importance of multiple processes. As an example, we provide evidence that dispersal, niche processes and trait interdependencies have about equal influence on trait-based assembly in an experimental grassland.

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“…One expects strong interactions to select for ecological specialization, but it is difficult to assess this without knowing patterns of resource utilization. In the case of terrestrial birds and bats, both of which exhibit strong latitudinal gradients in diversity, tropical environments support many species that use resources, such as nectar, fruit, and large insects, not perennially available in temperate latitudes (30)(31)(32). However, even among ecologically homogeneous phylogenetic groups, including many families of passerine birds, tropical regions harbor many more species than temperate regions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Species richness and morphological diversity of passerine birds

Ricklefs

2012

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

135

153

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The relationship between species richness and the occupation of niche space can provide insight into the processes that shape patterns of biodiversity. For example, if species interactions constrained coexistence, one might expect tendencies toward even spacing within niche space and positive relationships between diversity and total niche volume. I use morphological diversity of passerine birds as a proxy for diet, foraging maneuvers, and foraging substrates and examine the morphological space occupied by regional and local passerine avifaunas. Although independently diversified regional faunas exhibit convergent morphology, species are clustered rather than evenly distributed, the volume of the morphological space is weakly related to number of species per taxonomic family, and morphological volume is unrelated to number of species within both regional avifaunas and local assemblages. These results seemingly contradict patterns expected when species interactions constrain regional or local diversity, and they suggest a larger role for diversification, extinction, and dispersal limitation in shaping species richness.community | niche packing | principal components analysis A lthough species richness varies predictably with latitude and other environmental gradients (1, 2), the mechanisms responsible for geographic patterns in biodiversity remain poorly understood (3, 4). Classic niche-based hypotheses argue that local species richness is related to the variety of available resources, including escape space from enemies (5, 6), which are partitioned among species to reduce interspecific competition and thereby allow coexistence (7-10). Modifications of nichebased theory incorporating, for example, spatial and temporal variation in the environment (11), relax this prediction but have not been assessed by empirical studies. More recent consumerresource models have addressed conditions for coexistence of similar species (e.g., refs. 12 and 13). These involve small numbers of species in simplified environments, although they do contain many basic elements of more complex natural systems. Alternatively, diversification-based hypotheses posit that elevated rates of species production compared with extinction within a region push up steady-state levels of diversity and pack species more tightly into available ecological space, tending to decouple the relationship between species richness and niche space (14-16). Ecologists have not evaluated these hypotheses adequately, in part because of the difficulty of measuring niche space and its partitioning among species (e.g., refs. 17 and 18), although the idea that diversity generally exists in a long-term, resource-influenced equilibrium has increasing support (19,20).Recent analyses of the phylogenetic structure of communities (21, 22) and the distribution of functional traits in communities (23-25) have attempted to address the roles of ecological specialization and species interactions in the assembly of local communities from regional species pools. These studies ask wh...

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Patterns of functional diversity across an extensive environmental gradient: vertebrate consumers, hidden treatments and latitudinal trends

Cited by 169 publications

References 39 publications

Phylogenetic and functional diversity in large carnivore assemblages

Phylogenetic and functional diversity in large carnivore assemblages

Advances, challenges and a developing synthesis of ecological community assembly theory

Species richness and morphological diversity of passerine birds

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