Abstract
AbstractTo understand the mechanisms shaping global species diversity patterns, we focused on species assembly of bird communities on islands, which are ideal for detecting ecological and historical processes. We tested the hypotheses that species traits and island environments interactively shape the phylogenetic structure of island bird assemblages through a variety of ecological processes: habitat filtering, in‐situ speciation, extinction, dispersal limitation and competitive exclusion. We assessed the effects of species ecological traits and environment factors on the phylogenetic fields, which defined as phylogenetic distance between individual bird species and co‐occurred species within each island, using phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models. Climate and isolation were the most important factors driving the co‐occurrence patterns of island bird species: the species' phylogenetic fields were significantly clustered on tropical and/or isolated islands. We also found that the phylogenetic fields strongly correlated with the ecological traits especially for the diet and habitat preferences: the phylogenetic fields tended to over‐disperse for granivores and species inhabiting in wetlands or coasts, while frugivores showed clustered phylogenetic fields. Moreover, mobility and body size had substantial effects on species assemblages: long‐distance dispersers had clustered phylogenetic fields and small‐bodied species showed overdispersed phylogenetic fields.
Highlights
Reconciling ecological and evolutionary processes that shape the global species diversity patterns is one of the most challenging questions in community ecology and macroecology (Brown, 2014; Wiens & Donoghue, 2004)
We tested the following five predictions derived from prior researches (Figure 1b). (a) Dietary specialists have more clustered phylogenetic fields; (b) the dispersal propensity could be linked with more clustered phylogenetic fields on more isolated islands; (c) species body masses negatively correlate with phylogenetic clustering. (d) species inhabiting on islands with harsh environmental conditions exhibits clustered phylogenetic fields; (e) phylogenetic clustering is predominant in species living on larger islands with substantial habitat heterogeneity and/or under warmer climatic conditions
The findings on the effects of island climate and isolations were consistent with our expectations: species on warmer, wetter, more stable and isolated islands and long-distance dispersers had more clustered phylogenetic fields, supporting that in-situ speciation and dispersal limitation shape geographical patterns of species co-occurrence
Summary
Reconciling ecological and evolutionary processes that shape the global species diversity patterns is one of the most challenging questions in community ecology and macroecology (Brown, 2014; Wiens & Donoghue, 2004). We tested the hypotheses that both species traits and island environments shape the phylogenetic structure of island bird assemblages through ecological and historical processes; habitat filtering, in-situ speciation, extinction, dispersal limitation and competitive exclusion (Figure 1b). (d) species inhabiting on islands with harsh environmental conditions exhibits clustered phylogenetic fields; (e) phylogenetic clustering is predominant in species living on larger islands with substantial habitat heterogeneity (via island area and elevational range) and/or under warmer climatic conditions Based on these predictions, we assessed the importance of ecological and historical processes in shaping species assembly on islands, and discussed that how species traits and island characteristics concertedly have patterned the phylogenetic fields of bird species cooccurring on the islands worldwide
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