The distance decay of similarity in ecological communities

Soininen, Janne; McDonald, Robert I.; Hillebrand, Helmut

doi:10.1111/j.2006.0906-7590.04817.x

Cited by 270 publications

(516 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

479

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our data analysis proceeded in the following steps, explained in more detail in Soininen et al (2007) and Korhonen et al (2010). First, we checked for possible intercorrelation between the continuous variables, i.e.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Besides these temporal datasets (n = 212), we included spatial datasets (n = 17) from published (e.g., meta-review by Soininen et al (2007)) and unpublished sources (ESM Appendix 1). Our criteria for inclusion were that the dataset would contain information on organismal abundances at species or generic levels and that it contains at least four biotic samples.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The relationship between species richness and evenness: a meta-analysis of studies across aquatic ecosystems

2011

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Biological diversity comprises both species richness, i.e., the number of species in a community, and evenness, measuring how similar species are in their abundances. The relationship between species richness and evenness (RRE) across communities remains, however, a controversial issue in ecology because no consistent pattern has been reported. We conducted a systematic meta-review of RRE in aquatic ecosystems along regional to continental gradients and across trophic groups, differing in body size by 13 orders of magnitude. Hypotheses that RRE responded to latitudinal and scale variability across trophic groups were tested by regression analyses. Significant correlations of species richness and evenness only existed in 71 out of 229 datasets. Among the RRE, 89 were negative and 140 were positive. RRE did not vary with latitude but showed a positive response to scale. In a meta-analysis with ecosystem type as a single explaining variable, RRE did not vary among ecosystem types, i.e. between marine and freshwater. Finally, autotrophs had more positive RRE than heterotrophs. The weak RRE in many aquatic datasets suggests that richness and evenness often reflect independent components of biodiversity, highlighting that richness alone may be an incomplete surrogate for biodiversity. Our results further elucidate that RRE is driven by organismal and environmental properties, both of which must be considered to gain a deeper understanding of large-scale patterns of biodiversity.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between species richness and evenness: a meta-analysis of studies across aquatic ecosystems

2011

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Butterflies may be able to disperse to distant locations; however, the distances between the studied communities were not very large. A recent study showed that the similarity between communities begins to decrease at a distance of several hundred kilometers (25). Hence, there may have been an adequate number of migrants between communities regardless of distance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relative resource abundance explains butterfly biodiversity in island communities

Yamamoto

Yokoyama

Kawata³

2007

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

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ecologists have long been intrigued by the factors that control the pattern of biodiversity, i.e., the distribution and abundance of species. Previous studies have demonstrated that coexisting species partition their resources and/or that the compositional similarity between communities is determined by environmental factors, lending support to the niche-assembly model. However, no attempt has been made to test whether the relative amount of resources that reflects relative niche space controls relative species abundance in communities. Here, we demonstrate that the relative abundance of butterfly species in island communities is significantly related to the relative biomasses of their host plants but not to the geographic distance between communities. In the studied communities, the biomass of particular host plant species positively affected the abundance of the butterfly species that used them, and consequently, influenced the relative abundance of the butterfly communities. This indicated that the niche space of butterflies (i.e., the amount of resources) strongly influences butterfly biodiversity patterns. We present this field evidence of the niche-apportionment model that propose that the relative amount of niche space explains the pattern of the relative abundance of the species in communities. neutral theory ͉ niche theory ͉ relative species abundance B iodiversity is often considered to be synonymous with species richness and relative species abundance (1). For more than half a century, ecologists have paid attention to the factors that determine the relative species abundance in ecological communities; i.e., the commonness and rarity of species (2). Host plants and their herbivore communities are good systems for examining how the diversity of herbivores is influenced by their resources; indeed, insect ecologists have focused considerable attention on the question of how host plant communities affect the species richness and composition of insects. Although a recent review (3) pointed out that little progress on this subject has been made since the 1980s, a number of important studies have demonstrated that a large number of plant species is frequently correlated with a large number of insect species (4-6). Experimental studies have also demonstrated a positive relationship between the diversity of plant species and the diversity of consumers (7-9). The abundance of resources also represents an important factor in the structuring of insect communities (10). A number of studies have demonstrated that resource abundance explains the variation in the abundance and species richness of herbivorous insects (11)(12)(13)(14). However, these studies on host plant and herbivore communities have treated species richness and species composition as components of the diversity, and no studies have examined the relative abundance patterns of both host plants and herbivores.On the other hand, recent theoretical arguments have focused on whether the neutral or niche theory better explains the patterns of relative spec...

show abstract

“…Community structure at the local scale is viewed along a continuum of dynamics under the metacommunity concept (Leibold et al 2004). Recent meta-analyses have addressed this issue at two levels of abstraction (sensu Legendre et al 2005 andRuokolainen 2006): the variation in community composition (beta diversity) (Cottenie 2005), and the variation in beta diversity across spatial scales (Soininen et al 2007a). Both Cottenie (2005) and Soininen et al (2007a) identiWed four potential determining characteristics of metacommunity type: organism size, sampling spatial scale (including extent and grain size), habitat type and properties of the environment, and organism dispersal type or ability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and environmental factors contributing to patterns in arboreal and terrestrial oribatid mite diversity across spatial scales

2009

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Understanding the conditions under which species traits, species-environment relationships, and the spatial structure of the landscape interact to shape local communities requires quantifying the relative contributions of space and the environment on community composition. Using analogous sampling of arboreal and terrestrial oribatid mite communities across a large spatial scale in a temperate rainforest, we quantified the variation in oribatid mite community structure relating to environmental and spatial factors, and tested whether terrestrial and arboreal communities demonstrated a difference in their patterns of community composition based on the assumption of differences in dispersal potential. The expectation that terrestrial oribatid mite communities are spatially structured while arboreal communities are environmentally structured was supported by our analyses at the level of variation in beta diversity, but not by assessing beta diversity itself. We found that terrestrial oribatid mite communities with active, cursorial dispersal demonstrate spatial constraint consistent with reduced long-distance dispersal opportunities and high environmental dissimilarity among sites. Arboreal communities, which potentially disperse long distances via passive aerial vectors, show a spatial signature associated with patterns in beta diversity and a correlation with environmental dissimilarities among sites. In the arboreal community, moisture content of the substrate, total tree height, and average sampled branch height were significant factors explaining beta diversity patterns. For ground-dwelling species, predator abundance and soil type were important local determinants of community variability. Both communities showed clear spatial structuring, suggesting that dispersal limitation continues to influence community composition across multiple forest watershed locations. Our results provide evidence of dispersal-maintained diversity patterns in response to local environmental factors in arboreal and terrestrial communities. The relative importance of stochastic dispersal assembly may be dependent on strong deterministic effects associated with micro-site and macro-site environmental variation, particularly across large spatial scales.

show abstract

The distance decay of similarity in ecological communities

Cited by 270 publications

References 40 publications

The relationship between species richness and evenness: a meta-analysis of studies across aquatic ecosystems

The relationship between species richness and evenness: a meta-analysis of studies across aquatic ecosystems

Relative resource abundance explains butterfly biodiversity in island communities

Spatial and environmental factors contributing to patterns in arboreal and terrestrial oribatid mite diversity across spatial scales

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About