The roles of environment, space, and phylogeny in determining functional dispersion of rodents (Rodentia) in the Hengduan Mountains, China.

ABSTRACT: The recently described trait-based approach is becoming widely popular for a mechanistic understanding of species coexistence. However, the greatest challenge in functional analyses is decomposing the contributions of different ecological and evolutionary processes (e.g., niche-based process, neutral process, and evolutionary process) in determining trait structure. Taking rodents (Rodentia) in the Hengduan Mountains as our study model, we aim to (1) quantify the vertical patterns of functional structure for head-body length (HL), tail/body ratio (TR), animal component in diet (ACD), and all traits; (2) disentangle the relative importance of different assembly processes (environment, space, and phylogeny) in structuring trait dispersion; and (3) assess the feasibility of Bergmann's rule an

SUBMITTER: Du Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5743695 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature