Phylogenetic and Functional Structure of Wintering Waterbird Communities Associated with Ecological Differences

Abstract

Ecological differences may be related to community component divisions between Oriental (west) and Sino-Japanese (east) realms, and such differences may result in weak geographical breaks in migratory species that are highly mobile. Here, we conducted comparative phylogenetic and functional structure analyses of wintering waterbird communities in southern China across two realms and subsequently examined possible climate drivers of the observed patterns. An analysis based on such highly migratory species is particularly telling because migration is bound to reduce or completely eliminate any divergence between communities. Phylogenetic and functional structure of eastern communities showed over-dispersion while western communities were clustered. Basal phylogenetic and functional turnover of western communities was significant lower than that of eastern communities. The break between eastern and western communities was masked by these two realms. Geographic patterns were related to mean temperature changes and temperature fluctuations, suggesting that temperature may filter waterbird lineages and traits, thus underlying geographical community divisions. These results suggest phylogenetic and functional divisions in southern China, coinciding with biogeography. This study shows that temperature fluctuations constitute an essential mechanism shaping geographical divisions that have largely gone undetected previously, even under climate change.

Changes in functional composition and diversity of waterbirds: The roles of water level and submerged macrophytes

“…Environmental filtering would result in negative SESFRic and SESFDis values by allowing only a set of species with certain functional traits to persist and by forcing most of the biomass into a small trait space (Liu, Swenson, Zhang, & Ma, 2013;Mason et al, 2005). These findings were also in concordance with some of the previous studies on waterbirds that reported functionally clustered waterbirds communities (the western populations in Che et al, 2018;summer season in Che et al, 2019;Li et al, 2019).…”

“…We simulated null distributions of FD measures for the observed species richness values and abundances to see if the observed FD values differ from those of randomly assembled communities. For a community with n species, the null model was created by sampling n species randomly from the regional pool-defined as cumulative list of wintering waterbird species from the corresponding lake-without replacement 999 times and calculating FD indices for these 999 random communities (Che et al, 2018;Seymour et al, 2015;Swenson, 2014). In this way, species richness and community size are kept the same for each community, while only the names of the species are shuffled (Che et al, 2018;Swenson, 2014 (Mouchet, Villéger, Mason, & Mouillot, 2010).…”

Assembly processes of waterbird communities across subsidence wetlands in China: A functional and phylogenetic approach

“…In contrast to functional NRI capturing the overall dissimilarity of the taxa, functional NTI is more sensitive to the distribution of lineages close to the tips of trees (Swenson, ). Therefore, NRI might be more influenced by factors that operated in the distant past, while NTI patterns are likely to reflect more recent changes (Che et al, ). This pattern provides further evidence for the importance of environmental filtering over a variety of temporal scales in assembly processes of assemblages comprised of mobile species.…”

“…In contrast to functional NRI capturing the overall dissimilarity of the taxa, functional NTI is more sensitive to the distribution of lineages close to the tips of trees (Swenson, 2014 (Li et al, 2019), providing limited opportunities for resource partitioning. Similar to heterogeneous habitats, wetlands with better landscape connectivity can attract more waterbird species (Che et al, 2018), resulting in functional overdispersion, particularly in winter. However, waterbirds may rely more on local environment during the breeding season when communities were functionally clustered (Wiens, 1992).…”

Spatial Congruence or Mismatch Between Phylogenetic and Functional Structure of Seed Plants Along a Tropical Elevational Gradient: Different Traits Have Different Patterns

“…Although there are various studies comparing the functional and phylogenetic structure of animal assemblages (Devictor et al, 2010;Machac et al, 2011;Dehling et al, 2014;Sobral and Cianciaruso, 2016;Che et al, 2018), as well as plant assemblages (Kraft and Ackerly, 2010;Cianciaruso et al, 2012), there are few reports on the trend and relationship between the functional and phylogenetic structure of different traits along the elevational gradient. Actually, elevational gradients can suitably reflect competition and environmental filtering.…”