The role of species interactions in shaping the geographic pattern of ungulate abundance across African savannah

Abstract

Macroecologists traditionally emphasized the role of environmental variables for predicting species distribution and abundance at large scale. While biotic factors have been increasingly recognized as important at macroecological scales, producing valuable biotic variables remains challenging and rarely tested. Capitalizing on the wealth of population density estimates available for African savannah ungulates, here we modeled species average population density at 100 × 100 km as a function of both environmental variables and proxies of biotic interactions (competition and predation) and estimated their relative contribution. We fitted a linear mixed effect model on 1043 population density estimates for 63 species of ungulates using Bayesian inference and estimated the percentage of total variance explained by environmental, anthropogenic, and biotic interactions variables. Environmental and anthropogenic variables were the main drivers of ungulate population density, with NDVI, Distance to permanent water bodies and Human population density showing the highest contribution to the variance. Nonetheless, biotic interactions altogether contributed to a quarter of the variance explained, with predation and competition having a negative effect on species density. Despite the limitations of modelling biotic interactions in macroecological studies, proxies of biotic interactions can enhance our understanding of biological patterns at broad spatial scales, uncovering novel predictors as well as enhancing the predictive power of large-scale models.