Disentangling environmental and spatial processes of community assembly in tropical forests from local to regional scales

• DOI: 10.1111/oik.02426
• Publication Date: 2015-06-29T07:53:59Z
• Authors: Gabriel Arellano; J. Sebastián Tello; Peter M. Jørgensen; Alfredo F. Fuentes; M. Isabel Loza; Vania Torrez; Manuel J. Macía
• Keywords: Environmental gradient

Understanding patterns and mechanisms of variation in the compositional structure communities across spatial scales is one fundamental challenges ecology biogeography. In this study, we evaluated effects extent (i.e. size study region) on: 1) whether community composition can be better explained by environmental niche‐based) or (e.g. dispersal‐based) processes ; 2) how climate soils contribute to influence environment on plant composition. We surveyed a network 398 forest plots spanning ∼4000 m elevational gradient Madidi region northwestern Bolivia. Using redundancy analyses hierarchical partitioning, disentangled predictors species composition, further decomposing effect between its climatic soil components. repeated for 200 sub‐regions ranging from ∼250 ∼17 500 km 2 . Our show high degree idiosyncrasy results that come different sub‐regions. Despite variability, were able identify various important tropical our system. First, even though varied nearly two orders magnitude, total amount was scale independent; at all scales, space accounted about 25% differences among plots. Second, measured higher than average vast majority This true regardless analysis. Finally, found both variables significant fractions variation, but always more soils.