Spatial scale modulates the inference of metacommunity assembly processes

Viana, Duarte S.; Chase, Jonathan M.

doi:10.1002/ecy.2576

Cited by 100 publications

(106 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(110 reference statements)

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“…Finally, the used plots are relatively small in size, and the scale dependency might have become more apparent if larger plot sizes or spatial extent (i.e. areal coverage as a component of scale) had been considered (see Viana & Chase, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scale dependence of ecological assembly rules: Insights from empirical datasets and joint species distribution modelling

et al. 2020

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A comprehensive understanding of the scale dependency of environmental filtering and biotic interactions influencing the local assembly of species is paramount to derive realistic forecasts of the future of biodiversity and efficiently manage ecological communities. A classical assumption is that environmental filters are more prevalent at coarser scales with diminishing effects towards the finest scales where biotic interactions become more decisive. Recently, a refinement was proposed stipulating that the scale dependency of biotic interactions should relate to the type of interaction. Specifically, the effect of negative interactions (e.g. competition) should diminish with coarsening scale, whereas positive interactions (i.e. facilitation) should be detected irrespective of the scale. We use multiple vascular plant species datasets sampled at nested spatial scales (plot size varying from 0.04 to 64 m2) and recently developed joint species distribution models to test the hypotheses. Our analyses indicate slightly stronger environmental filtering with increasing plot size. While the overall strength of biotic interactions did not vary consistently across scales, we found a tendency for negative interactions to fade away with increasing plot size slightly more than positive interactions. Synthesis. We provide partial, but not unambiguous, evidence of the scale dependency of ecological assembly rules. However, our correlative methodology only allows us to interpret the findings as indication of environmental filtering and biotic interactions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scale dependence of ecological assembly rules: Insights from empirical datasets and joint species distribution modelling

et al. 2020

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“…Furthermore, it is important to recognize that the relative importance of environmental filtering depends on the spatial (and temporal) scale in which observations are made. At small scales, and where environmental heterogeneity is minimal, the signal of ecological drift will be stronger than when scales are larger and/or heterogeneity is higher 45,46 …”

Section: A Primer Of Metacommunity Ecology's Basic Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biodiversity conservation through the lens of metacommunity ecology

Chase

Jeliazkov

Ladouceur

et al. 2020

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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121

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Metacommunity ecology combines local (e.g., environmental filtering and biotic interactions) and regional (e.g., dispersal and heterogeneity) processes to understand patterns of species abundance, occurrence, composition, and diversity across scales of space and time. As such, it has a great potential to generalize and synthesize our understanding of many ecological problems. Here, we give an overview of how a metacommunity perspective can provide useful insights for conservation biology, which aims to understand and mitigate the effects of anthropogenic drivers that decrease population sizes, increase extinction probabilities, and threaten biodiversity. We review four general metacommunity processes—environmental filtering, biotic interactions, dispersal, and ecological drift—and discuss how key anthropogenic drivers (e.g., habitat loss and fragmentation, and nonnative species) can alter these processes. We next describe how the patterns of interest in metacommunities (abundance, occupancy, and diversity) map onto issues at the heart of conservation biology, and describe cases where conservation biology benefits by taking a scale‐explicit metacommunity perspective. We conclude with some ways forward for including metacommunity perspectives into ideas of ecosystem functioning and services, as well as approaches to habitat management, preservation, and restoration.

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“…Typically, the balance between environmental and spatial control is affected by some fundamental factors related to spatial scale (Declerck, Coronel, Legendre, & Brendonck, 2011;Mykrä, Heino, & Muotka, 2007;Viana & Chase, 2019) or among-site dispersal rates (Brown & Swan, 2010). At very small spatial scales or in well-connected systems, there may occur excessive dispersal or mass effects (ME, local species composition being affected by high dispersal through source-sink relations, Leibold & Chase, 2018), which allows species to persist also in environmentally unsuitable habitats due to the high level of dispersal from adjacent suitable habitats.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metacommunity Structure of Stream Insects across Three Hierarchical Spatial scales

Soininen

Deng³

et al. 2020

Ecology and Evolution

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A major challenge in community ecology is to understand the underlying factors driving metacommunity (i.e., a set of local communities connected through species dispersal) dynamics. However, little is known about the effects of varying spatial scale on the relative importance of environmental and spatial (i.e., dispersal related) factors in shaping metacommunities and on the relevance of different dispersal pathways. Using a hierarchy of insect metacommunities at three spatial scales (a small, within‐stream scale, intermediate, among‐stream scale, and large, among‐sub‐basin scale), we assessed whether the relative importance of environmental and spatial factors shaping metacommunity structure varies predictably across spatial scales, and tested how the importance of different dispersal routes vary across spatial scales. We also studied if different dispersal ability groups differ in the balance between environmental and spatial control. Variation partitioning showed that environmental factors relative to spatial factors were more important for community composition at the within‐stream scale. In contrast, spatial factors (i.e., eigenvectors from Moran's eigenvector maps) relative to environmental factors were more important at the among‐sub‐basin scale. These results indicate that environmental filtering is likely to be more important at the smallest scale with highest connectivity, while dispersal limitation seems to be more important at the largest scale with lowest connectivity. Community variation at the among‐stream and among‐sub‐basin scales were strongly explained by geographical and topographical distances, indicating that overland pathways might be the main dispersal route at the larger scales among more isolated sites. The relative effect of environmental and spatial factors on insect communities varied between low and high dispersal ability groups; this variation was inconsistent among three hierarchical scales. In sum, our study indicates that spatial scale, connectivity, and dispersal ability jointly shape stream metacommunities.

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Spatial scale modulates the inference of metacommunity assembly processes

Cited by 100 publications

References 55 publications

Scale dependence of ecological assembly rules: Insights from empirical datasets and joint species distribution modelling

Scale dependence of ecological assembly rules: Insights from empirical datasets and joint species distribution modelling

Biodiversity conservation through the lens of metacommunity ecology

Metacommunity Structure of Stream Insects across Three Hierarchical Spatial scales

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