A comparison on the impacts of short-term micro-environmental and long-term macro-climatic variability on structuring beta diversity of microarthropod communities

Abstract

It is unknown whether long-term climatic variability or short-term microhabitat environmental fluctuation would be the key mechanism in determining the microarthropod compositional variation. In the present brief report, by utilizing microarthropod communities as the study model, I aimed to test the relative importance of macro-climatic versus micro-environmental variability on structuring the beta diversity patterns of microarthropod communities. The random sampling effect in quantifying beta diversity has been controlled using a null model. Variation partitioning technique is employed to test the relative importance of both mechanisms. The results showed that microarthropod beta diversity pattern is exclusively influenced by micro-environmental condition, especially for oribatids and collembolans. The influence of macro-climatic variability on structuring microarthropod community structure is exactly zero as indicated by variation partitioning analyses. Correspondingly, the interaction between micro-environment and macro-climate plays no roles on structuring microarthropod beta diversity too. Conclusively, microhabitat condition, but not regional climate, is the driver of microarthropod diversity patterns in SW Canada.