Latitudinal gradients and ecological drivers of β-diversity vary across spatial scales in a temperate forest region
Date
2020-03-12
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley
Abstract
Aim: Our understanding of the mechanisms driving β-diversity is still rather rudimentary. This study evaluates the influences of environmental filtering versus spatial scale of regional communities on β-diversity across latitudes.
Location: North-eastern China.
Methods: The β-diversity was calculated in each regional community. The spatial extent of these “regional communities”, which included five or 10 plots, was ≤ 140 km. A random assembly null model was used to assess the effects of species abundance distribution on the β-diversity. Moreover, the deviation of observed β-diversity from a null model (called β-deviation) was also assessed. The variations of the β values were partitioned into environmental, latitudinal and their joint effects.
Results: The observed β-diversity declined with increasing latitude, although the β-deviations showed a non-monotonic pattern as the latitude increased at two studied scales. All the regional communities consisting of five or 10 local plots exhibited significantly positive β-deviations. The total amount of variation in β-deviations explained by environmental and latitudinal variables increased dramatically with increasing scale. A significant pure environmental effect was observed at both scales, explaining 30% of the variation in β-deviation for regional communities consisting of five local plots and 58.7% for regional communities consisting of 10 local plots. The spatial variation in precipitation primarily accounted for the β-gradient.
Main conclusions: This is one of the few multiscale analyses to investigate latitudinal patterns and driving mechanisms of tree β-diversity in temperate forests. The β-deviation showed a similar trend of change with latitude, but the variation of β-deviation explained by the environments and latitude was highly dependent on the scale of regional communities studied. Environmental filtering and the spatial scale of regional communities jointly accounted for the β-gradient, with environmental filtering appearing to determine the high variation of species turnover along the latitudinal gradient.
Description
CITATION: Zhang, C. et al. 2020. Latitudinal gradients and ecological drivers of β-diversity vary across spatial scales in a temperate forest region. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 29(7): 1257– 1264. doi:10.1111/geb.13101
The original publication is available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14668238
The original publication is available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14668238
Keywords
Environmental filtering, Latitudinal gradient, Regional species pools, Spatial scale, Tree β-diversity
Citation
Zhang, C. et al. 2020. Latitudinal gradients and ecological drivers of β-diversity vary across spatial scales in a temperate forest region. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 29(7): 1257– 1264. doi:10.1111/geb.13101