Inferring ecological processes from taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional trait β-diversity.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the influences of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering on the structure of ecological communities is a major challenge in ecology. Insight may be gained by combining phylogenetic, functional and taxonomic data to characterize spatial turnover in community structure (β-diversity). We develop a framework that allows rigorous inference of the strengths of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering by combining these three types of β-diversity. Our framework provides model-generated expectations for patterns of taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional β-diversity across biologically relevant combinations of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering. After developing the framework we compared the model-generated expectations to the commonly used "intuitive"

SUBMITTER: Stegen JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3117851 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature