Environmental and spatial drivers of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic characteristics of bat communities in human-modified landscapes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Assembly of species into communities following human disturbance (e.g., deforestation, fragmentation) may be governed by spatial (e.g., dispersal) or environmental (e.g., niche partitioning) mechanisms. Variation partitioning has been used to broadly disentangle spatial and environmental mechanisms, and approaches utilizing functional and phylogenetic characteristics of communities have been implemented to determine the relative importance of particular environmental (or niche-based) mechanisms. Nonetheless, few studies have integrated these quantitative approaches to comprehensively assess the relative importance of particular structuring processes.

Methods

We employed a novel variation partitioning approach to evaluate the relative importance of particular spati

SUBMITTER: Cisneros LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5068362 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature