The relationships of plant species occupancy to niches and traits vary with spatial scale
Mod, H. K., Rissanen, T., Niittynen, P., Soininen, J., & Luoto, M. (2023). The relationships of plant species occupancy to niches and traits vary with spatial scale. Journal of Biogeography, 50(6), 1013-1025. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14608
Published in
Journal of BiogeographyDate
2023Copyright
© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Aim
Support for different underlying mechanisms of species occupancy is inconsistent, yet this could be related to spatial scale. Since abiotic filtering typically acts at broader scales than biotic interactions, we hypothesise that occupancy could be more driven by species' abiotic niche (i.e. tolerance and preference of abiotic conditions) at broad scales, whereas species' traits affecting competitive ability could be more important at fine scales. Here, we test these hypotheses by assessing relationships of occupancy to niche and trait metrics across spatial scales.
Location
Four study areas located north of Arctic Circle.
Taxon
Vascular plants.
Methods
We derived occupancy for 106 species at four spatial scales (micro-scale with plot size of 0.04 m2 and extent of 2 km, local-scale with plot size of 4 m2 and extent of 40 km, regional-scale with plot size of 4 ha and extent of 800 km, and polar-scale with plot size of 4 km2 and extent of 5200 km). We then assessed using generalized additive models whether the relationships between occupancy and species' niche breadth, niche marginality, intraspecific trait variability (ITV) and trait distinctiveness vary across the scales.
Results
At the finer scales, ITV (especially of specific leaf area) had the highest contribution with positive relationship in explaining occupancy. At the broader scales, occupancy was better explained by niche metrics. Especially at the broadest scale, the occupancy had a positive relationship with species' climatic tolerance.
Main Conclusions
Abiotic filtering, especially related to macro-climate, drives species occupancy at broader spatial scales while biotic interactions are relatively more important at local scales. This scale-dependency of factors behind species occupancy should be accounted for when, for example, planning conservation of rare species, forecasting invasions or anticipating the effects of changing climate on biota at local versus global scales.
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Publisher
Wiley-BlackwellISSN Search the Publication Forum
0305-0270Keywords
Publication in research information system
https://converis.jyu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/182532398
Metadata
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Additional information about funding
T.R. and P.N. acknowledge funding from the Doctoral Programme in Geosciences, University of Helsinki and Maj and Tor Nessling foundation, respectively, and M.L. acknowledges Academy of Finland funding (grant 342890).License
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