Abstract
Biogeography and metacommunity ecology provide two different perspectives on species diversity. Both are spatial in nature but their spatial scales do not necessarily match. With recent boom of metacommunity studies, we see an increasing need for clear discrimination of spatial scales relevant for both perspectives. This discrimination is a necessary prerequisite for improved understanding of ecological phenomena across scales. Here we provide a case study to illustrate some spatial scale-dependent concepts in recent metacommunity studies and identify potential pitfalls. We presented here the diversity patterns of Neotropical lepidopterans and spiders viewed both from metacommunity and biogeographical perspectives. Specifically, we investigated how the relative importance of niche- and dispersal-based processes for community assembly change at two spatial scales: metacommunity scale, i.e. within a locality, and biogeographical scale, i.e. among localities widely scattered along a macroclimatic gradient. As expected, niche-based processes dominated the community assembly at metacommunity scale, while dispersal-based processes played a major role at biogeographical scale for both taxonomical groups. However, we also observed small but significant spatial effects at metacommunity scale and environmental effects at biogeographical scale. We also observed differences in diversity patterns between the two taxonomical groups corresponding to differences in their dispersal modes. Our results thus support the idea of continuity of processes interactively shaping diversity patterns across scales and emphasize the necessity of integration of metacommunity and biogeographical perspectives.
Highlights
Since the early development of the ecological theory, understanding the mechanisms that drive small- and large-scale patterns in species richness and composition received primary interest [1,2,3,4]
We found that at the biogeographical scale the composition of spiders was mainly explained by broad (Radj250.141) and fine spatial scale structures (Radj250.016), and the composition of lepidopterans was explained only by the pure spatial structure, i.e., S|E (Radj250.061)
At the biogeographical scale, mainly the geographical distance explained the variation in species composition of lepidopterans and spiders suggesting that dispersal-based processes control large
Summary
Since the early development of the ecological theory, understanding the mechanisms that drive small- and large-scale patterns in species richness and composition received primary interest [1,2,3,4]. The initial argument was that local processes determine diversity patterns, but the pioneer studies of Robert MacArthur emphasized that regional processes could drive small- and large-scale diversity patterns [5, 6]. The proponents of these two point of view established hot debates that contributed to important advances to the ecological theory. Local interactions and dispersal constitute processes working together to assemble communities [10], and local and regional processes are both important [11] This interaction between local and regional processes and their effects on community structure at different scales are explicitly tested in metacommunity theory, which considers a set of local communities linked by dispersal of potential interacting species [12]. The confusing part is that often the same types of processes are used to explain metacommunity and biogeography patterns, such as niche differentiation and dispersal limitation
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