Distance decay 2.0 – a global synthesis of taxonomic and functional turnover in ecological communities
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Date
Authors
Graco-Roza, Caio
Aarnio, Sonja
Abrego, Nerea
Acosta, Alicia T.R.
Alahuhta, Janne
Altman, Jan
Angiolini, Claudia
Aroviita, Jukka
Attorre, Fabio
Baastrup-Spohr, Lars
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley
Abstract
AIM : Understanding the variation in community composition and species abundances
(i.e., β-diversity)
is at the heart of community ecology. A common approach to examine
β-diversity
is to evaluate directional variation in community composition by
measuring the decay in the similarity among pairs of communities along spatial or
environmental distance. We provide the first global synthesis of taxonomic and functional
distance decay along spatial and environmental distance by analysing 148 datasets
comprising different types of organisms and environments.
LOCATION : Global.
TIME PERIOD : 1990 to present.
MAJOR TAXA STUDIED : From diatoms to mammals.
METHOD : We measured the strength of the decay using ranked Mantel tests (Mantel r)
and the rate of distance decay as the slope of an exponential fit using generalized linear
models. We used null models to test whether functional similarity decays faster or
slower than expected given the taxonomic decay along the spatial and environmental
distance. We also unveiled the factors driving the rate of decay across the datasets,
including latitude, spatial extent, realm and organismal features.
RESULTS : Taxonomic distance decay was stronger than functional distance decay along both spatial and environmental distance. Functional distance decay was random given
the taxonomic distance decay. The rate of taxonomic and functional spatial distance decay was fastest in the datasets from mid-latitudes.
Overall, datasets covering larger
spatial extents showed a lower rate of decay along spatial distance but a higher rate of
decay along environmental distance. Marine ecosystems had the slowest rate of decay
along environmental distances.
MAIN CONCLUSIONS : In general, taxonomic distance decay is a useful tool for biogeographical
research because it reflects dispersal-related
factors in addition to species
responses to climatic and environmental variables. Moreover, functional distance
decay might be a cost-effective
option for investigating community changes in heterogeneous
environments.
Description
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : All the data used in this study can be found in a Zenodo repository (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6406911). Code to run the analysis is available in a GitHub repository (https://github.com/graco -roza/ DISTA NCE_DECAY_2.0). The authors declare that some datasets were compiled from sPlot (https://www.idiv.de/en/splot.html), Biodiversity Exploratories (https://www.biodi versi ty-explo rator ies. de/en/) and CESTES database (Jeliazkov et al., 2020).
Keywords
Biogeography, Environmental gradient, Spatial distance, Trait, Community composition, Species abundance, Community ecology, β-diversity
Sustainable Development Goals
Citation
Graco-Roza, C., Aarnio, S., Abrego, N. et al. (2022). Distance decay
2.0 –A global synthesis of taxonomic and functional turnover
in ecological communities. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 31(7),
1399–1421. https://DOI.org/10.1111/geb.13513.