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Assessing the equilibrium between assemblage composition and climate: A directional distance-decay approach
Andrés Baselga1,2, Carola Gómez-Rodríguez2,3
1Department of Zoology, Genetics and Physical Anthropology, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
The Journal of Animal Ecology
|April 28, 2021
Summary
Biodiversity patterns show distance-decay in similarity, but this decay is anisotropic, varying with climate and dispersal. This has implications for how species track climate change.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Biodiversity Science
- Biogeography
Background:
- Assemblage composition similarity typically decreases with spatial distance, driven by climate and dispersal limitations.
- This distance-decay is often modeled as isotropic, assuming uniform decay in all directions.
- Anisotropic climatic gradients suggest that similarity decay should also be anisotropic if species distributions are in equilibrium with climate.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess anisotropy in distance-decay patterns of assemblage similarity across marine plankton, terrestrial vertebrates, and European beetles.
- To investigate the relationship between distance-decay anisotropy, dispersal ability, and ecological niche characteristics in beetle groups.
- To understand deviations from equilibrium between species composition and climate across different biological groups and realms.
Main Methods:
- Assessed anisotropy by correlating model residuals with site separation angles.
- Computed separate distance-decay models for North-South and East-West directions.
- Analyzed relationships between anisotropy, dispersal (wingless proportion, body size), and niche traits (habitat, trophic position) in 21 beetle groups.
Main Results:
- Anisotropy in distance-decay varied significantly across realms and taxa.
- Contrary to expectations based on climate gradients, North-South distance-decays were steeper than East-West in plankton and most vertebrates, but flatter in amphibians and most beetles.
- The proportion of wingless species explained 60% of the variation in anisotropy differences between North-South and East-West decays in beetles.
Conclusions:
- The degree of ecological equilibrium with climate decreases from marine to terrestrial realms.
- Equilibrium differs markedly between vertebrates and beetles, influenced by dispersal ability.
- Findings have significant implications for predicting species' abilities to track suitable climates under climate change.
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