Spatial patterns of species richness and functional diversity in Costa Rican terrestrial mammals: implications for conservation

González-Maya, José Fernando; Víquez-R, Luis; Árias-Alzate, Andrés; Belant, Jerrold L.; Ceballos, Gerardo

doi:10.1111/ddi.12373

Cited by 47 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 75 publications

(164 reference statements)

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“…Previous studies of global and regional variation on FD in mammals and other groups have shown similar patterns than those obtained here [3, 4, 37, 68, 69], and most studies have identified anthropogenic intervention–in terms of land-cover transformation, as a major driver for FD loss [14, 15, 38, 70]. However, very few studies have assessed the influence of species at risk and the potential functional loss due to species extinctions [38, 50, 71].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Further explorations into mammal FD at finer and more detailed resolutions and more precise definitions of human intervention would likely provide confirmation of our results and will increase the precision of the trends found in our results [3, 4]. Our definition of FD, as linked to the concept of functional richness, is the functional trait space occupied by species within a community [75], influencing productivity and in turn functionality and resilience at ecosystem and community scale.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

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Distribution of mammal functional diversity in the Neotropical realm: Influence of land-use and extinction risk

et al. 2017

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Functional diversity represents a measure of diversity that incorporates the role of species in an ecosystem, and therefore its dynamics and resilience. Assessing its drivers and spatial variation represents an important step forward in our understanding of functional ecosystem dynamics and it is also necessary to achieve a comprehensive conservation planning. In this paper, we assessed mammal functional diversity for the 218 ecoregions within the Neotropical realm. We evaluated the overall influence and spatial variation of species richness, ecoregion extent, intervention and species at risk on functional diversity. Using ordinary least squares and geographically weighted regression modeling approaches, we found that intervened areas and threatened and non-threatened species are the most influential overall drivers of functional diversity. However, we also detected that these variables do not operate equally across scales. Our local analyses indicated both that the variation explained and local coefficients vary spatially depending on the ecoregion and major habitat type. As estimates of functional diversity are based on current distribution of all mammals, negative influence of intervened areas and positive influence of non-threatened species may reflect a potential degradation of functional processes for some ecosystems. Most generally, the negative influence of intervention together with the influence of threatened species indicates that some areas are currently more susceptible to functional diversity loss. Our results help to pinpoint key areas requiring urgent conservation action to reduce natural land-cover loss and areas where threatened species play influential roles on ecosystem functioning.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Distribution of mammal functional diversity in the Neotropical realm: Influence of land-use and extinction risk

et al. 2017

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“…All else being equal, the probability of an assemblage including species with unique trait compositions increases with the number of species (e.g., Naeem, Bunker, Hector, Loreau, & Perrings, ). Indeed, most, if not all, studies that have examined the relationship between functional richness and species richness, found a positive saturating association (e.g., Petchey, Evans, Fishburn, & Gaston, ; Farias & Svensson, ; González‐Maya, Víquez‐R, Arias‐Alzate, Belant, & Ceballos, ). This relationship is not necessarily linear, due to a decrease in the appearance of new traits as the number of species increases (e.g., Farias & Svensson, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The global biogeography of lizard functional groups

Vidan

Novosolov

Bauer

et al. 2019

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Understanding the mechanisms determining species richness is a primary goal of biogeography. Richness patterns of sub‐groups within a taxon are usually assumed to be driven by similar processes. However, if richness of distinct ecological strategies respond differently to the same processes, inferences made for an entire taxon may be misleading. We deconstruct the global lizard assemblage into functional groups and examine the congruence among richness patterns between them. We further examine the species richness – functional richness relationship to elucidate the way functional diversity contributes to the overall species richness patterns. Location Global. Methods Using comprehensive biological trait databases we classified the global lizard assemblage into ecological strategies based on body size, diet, activity times and microhabitat preferences, using Archetypal Analysis. We then examined spatial gradients in the richness of each strategy at the one‐degree grid cell, biome, and realm scales. Results We found that lizards can best be characterized by seven “ecological strategies”: scansorial, terrestrial, nocturnal, herbivorous, fossorial, large, and semi‐aquatic. There are large differences among the global richness patterns of these strategies. While the major richness hotspot for lizards in general is in Australia, several strategies exhibit highest richness in the Amazon Basin. Importantly, the global maximum in lizard species richness is achieved at intermediate values of functional diversity and increasing functional diversity further result in a slow decline of species richness. Main conclusions The deconstruction of the global lizard assemblage along multiple ecological axes offers a new way to conceive lizard diversity patterns. It suggests that local lizard richness mostly increases when species belonging to particular ecological strategies become hyper‐diverse there, and not because more ecological types are present in the most species rich localities. Thus maximum richness and maximum ecological diversity do not overlap. These results shed light on the global richness pattern of lizards, and highlight previously unidentified spatial patterns in understudied functional groups.

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“…According to evidence from some recent studies, taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity should respond to distinct ecological drivers, implying that different facets of diversity may be complementary and provide integrative information about community assembly (González‐Maya, Víquez‐R, Arias‐Alzate, Belant, & Ceballos, ; Heino & Tolonen, ; Saito, Siqueira, et al, ). Generally, taxonomic diversity might be affected by both deterministic (e.g., environmental conditions) and some stochastic processes (e.g., dispersal and ecological drift) (Munemitsu & Noriko, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple facets of stream macroinvertebrate alpha diversity are driven by different ecological factors across an extensive altitudinal gradient

Jiang

Wang

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Environmental filtering and spatial structuring are important ecological processes for the generation and maintenance of biodiversity. However, the relative importance of these ecological drivers for multiple facets of diversity is still poorly understood in highland streams. Here, we examined the responses of three facets of stream macroinvertebrate alpha diversity to local environmental, landscape‐climate and spatial factors in a near‐pristine highland riverine ecosystem. Taxonomic (species richness, Shannon diversity, and evenness), functional (functional richness, evenness, divergence, and Rao's Quadratic entropy), and a proxy of phylogenetic alpha diversity (taxonomic distinctness and variation in taxonomic distinctness) were calculated for macroinvertebrate assemblages in 55 stream sites. Then Pearson correlation coefficient was used to explore congruence of indices within and across the three diversity facets. Finally, multiple linear regression models and variation partitioning were employed to identify the relative importance of different ecological drivers of biodiversity. We found most correlations between the diversity indices within the same facet, and between functional richness and species richness were relatively strong. The two phylogenetic diversity indices were quite independent from taxonomic diversity but correlated with functional diversity indices to some extent. Taxonomic and functional diversity were more strongly determined by environmental variables, while phylogenetic diversity was better explained by spatial factors. In terms of environmental variables, habitat‐scale variables describing habitat complexity and water physical features played the primary role in determining the diversity patterns of all three facets, whereas landscape factors appeared less influential. Our findings indicated that both environmental and spatial factors are important ecological drivers for biodiversity patterns of macroinvertebrates in Tibetan streams, although their relative importance was contingent on different facets of diversity. Such findings verified the complementary roles of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity, and highlighted the importance of comprehensively considering multiple ecological drivers for different facets of diversity in biodiversity assessment.

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Spatial patterns of species richness and functional diversity in Costa Rican terrestrial mammals: implications for conservation

Cited by 47 publications

References 75 publications

Distribution of mammal functional diversity in the Neotropical realm: Influence of land-use and extinction risk

Distribution of mammal functional diversity in the Neotropical realm: Influence of land-use and extinction risk

The global biogeography of lizard functional groups

Multiple facets of stream macroinvertebrate alpha diversity are driven by different ecological factors across an extensive altitudinal gradient

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