Dispersal and ecological traits explain differences in beta diversity patterns of European beetles

Abstract

AbstractAimDisentangling the contributions of niche and dispersal processes as species distribution drivers is crucial from both theoretical and practical standpoints. We investigated whether niche‐related and dispersal‐related functional traits of 19 beetle clades were good predictors of beta diversity patterns across continental European countries.LocationContinental Europe.MethodsWe quantified the overall compositional heterogeneity (a measure of multiple‐site dissimilarity) of each beetle clade in continental Europe and assessed its relationship with body size and the proportion of wingless species as proxies for dispersal ability. Overall compositional heterogeneity was also compared with trophic and habitat preferences of clades as proxies for their ecological specialization. Additionally, beta diversity patterns were characterized as a multivariate pairwise dissimilarity matrix among pairs of countries for each beetle clade. We assessed whether differences among these pairwise structures were related to dispersal ability or the ecological specialization of clades. The turnover and nestedness‐resultant components of compositional dissimilarity were calculated separately for all analyses.ResultsThe dispersal ability and ecological specialization explained a large proportion (> 70%) of the variation in overall compositional heterogeneity but a lower proportion (c. 40%) of the variation in the multivariate pairwise structures. Remarkably, the explained variation was shared between both sets of predictors in the case of overall compositional heterogeneity but was independently related to dispersal ability or ecological specialization for the multivariate pairwise structure analysis.Main conclusionsThese results suggest a tight relationship between ecological specialization, dispersal ability and compositional heterogeneity of European beetle clades. However, the specific patterns of dissimilarities between pairs of countries seem to be determined independently by either ecological or dispersal processes and seem to be subject to other unmeasured factors.