Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T01:49:55.364Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Differences among regions in environmental predictors of primate community similarity affect conclusions about community assembly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2019

Lydia Beaudrot Open the ORCID record for Lydia Beaudrot [Opens in a new window]  and
Andrew J. Marshall Open the ORCID record for Andrew J. Marshall [Opens in a new window]
Lydia Beaudrot*
Affiliation:
Department of BioSciences, Program in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston, TX, 77005-1892, USA
Andrew J. Marshall
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 1085 S. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107, USA Program in the Environment, University of Michigan, 440 Church St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1041, USA School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, 440 Church St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1041, USA Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, 1105 North University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1085, USA
*
*Email: beaudrot@rice.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Understanding why ecological communities contain the species they do is a long-standing question in ecology. Two common mechanisms that affect the species found within communities are dispersal limitation and environmental filtering. Correctly identifying the relative influences of these mechanisms has important consequences for our understanding of community assembly. Here variable selection was used to identify the environmental variables that best predict tropical forest primate community similarity in four biogeographic regions: the Neotropics, Afrotropics, Madagascar and the island of Borneo in South-East Asia. The environmental variables included net primary productivity and altitude, as well as multiple temperature, precipitation and topsoil variables. Using the best environmental variables in each region, Mantel and partial Mantel tests were used to reanalyse data from a previously published study. The proportion of variance explained increased for each region. Despite increases, much of the variation remained unexplained for all regions (R2: Africa = 0.45, South America = 0.16, Madagascar = 0.28, Borneo = 0.10), likely due to different evolutionary and biogeographic histories within each region. Nonetheless, substantial variation among regions in the environmental variables that best predicted primate community similarity were documented. For example, none of the 14 environmental variables was included for all four regions, yet each variable was included for at least one region. Contrary to prior results, environmental filtering was an important assembly mechanism for primate communities in tropical forests worldwide. Geographic distance more strongly predicted African and South American communities whereas environmental distance more strongly predicted Malagasy and Bornean communities. These results suggest that dispersal limitation structures primate communities more strongly than environmental filtering in Africa and in South America whereas environmental filtering structures primate communities more strongly than dispersal limitation in Madagascar and Borneo. For communities defined by genera, environmental distance more strongly predicted primate communities than geographic distance in all four regions, which suggests that environmental filtering is a more influential assembly mechanism at the genus level. Therefore, a more nuanced consideration of environmental variables affects conclusions about the influences of environmental filtering and dispersal limitation on primate community structure.

Keywords

Community assemblydispersal limitationmacroecologysoil characteristicsspecies sortingtropical forest
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , March 2019 , pp. 83 - 90
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Literature cited

Astorga, A, Oksanen, J, Luoto, M, Soininen, J, Virtanen, R and Muotka, T (2012) Distance decay of similarity in freshwater communities: do macro- and microorganisms follow the same rules. Global Ecology and Biogeography 21, 365–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaudrot, L and Marshall, AJ (2011) Primate communities are structured more by dispersal limitation than by niches. Journal of Animal Ecology 80, 332–341.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beaudrot, L, Struebig, MJ, Meijaard, E, Van Balen, S, Husson, S and Marshall, AJ (2013a). Co-occurrence patterns of Bornean vertebrates suggest competitive exclusion is strongest in distantly related taxa. Oecologia 173, 1053–1062.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaudrot, L, Struebig, MJ, Meijaard, E, Van Balen, S, Husson, S, Young, CF and Marshall, AJ (2013b). Interspecific interactions between primates, birds, bats and squirrels may affect community composition on Borneo. American Journal of Primatology 75, 170–185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beck, J, Ballesteros-Meijia, L, Buchmann, CM, Dengler, J, Fritz, SA, Gruber, B, Hof, C, Jansen, F, Knapp, S, Kreft, H, Schneider, A-K, Winter, M and Dormann, CF (2012) What’s on the horizon for macroecology? Ecography 35, 673–683.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradburd, GS, Ralph, PL and Coop, GM (2013) Disentangling the effects of geographic and ecological isolation on genetic differentiation. Evolution 67, 3258–3273.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chang, L-W, Zeleny, D, Li, C-F, Chiu, S-T and Hsieh, C-F (2013) Better environmental data may reverse conclusions about niche- and dispersal-based processes in community assembly. Ecology 94, 2145–2151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chase, JM, Amarasekare, P, Cottenie, K, Gonzalez, A, Holt, RD, Holyoak, M, Hoopes, MF, Leibold, MA, Loreau, M, Mouquet, N, Shurin, J and Tilman, D (2005) Competing theories for competitive metacommunities. In Holyoak, M, Leibold, MA and Holt, RD (eds), Metacommunities: Spatial Dynamics and Ecological Communities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 334–354.Google Scholar
Clarke, KR and Ainsworth, M (1993) A method of linking multivariate community structure to environmental variables. Marine Ecology Progress Series 92, 205–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corlett, RT and Primack, RB (2006) Tropical rainforests and the need for cross-continental comparisons. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21, 104–110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Corlett, RT and Primack, RB (2011) Tropical Rain Forests: An Ecological and Biogeographical Comparison. Hong Kong: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cottenie, K (2005) Integrating environmental and spatial processes in ecological community dynamics. Ecology Letters 8, 1175–1182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dewar, RE and Richard, AF (2007) Evolution in the hypervariable environment of Madagascar. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104, 13723–13727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emmons, LH (1999) Of mice and monkeys: primates as predictors of mammal community richness. In Fleagle, JG, Janson, C and Reed, KE (eds), Primate Communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 171–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleagle, JG and Lehman, SM, eds. (2006) Primate Biogeography: Progress and Prospects. New York, NY: Springer.Google Scholar
Fleagle, JG and Reed, KE (1996) Comparing primate communities: a multivariate approach. Journal of Human Evolution 30, 489–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, J (1995) Predictive vegetation mapping: geographic modelling of biospatial patterns in relation to environmental gradients. Progress in Physical Geography 19, 474–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ganzhorn, JU (1999) Body mass, competition and the structure of primate communities. In Fleagle, JG, Janson, C and Reed, KE (eds), Primate Communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 141–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groves, CG (2001) Primate Taxonomy. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Harcourt, AH and Wood, MA (2012) Rivers as barriers to primate distributions in Africa. International Journal of Primatology 33, 168–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haugaasen, T and Peres, CA (2005) Primate assemblage structure in Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests. American Journal of Primatology 67, 243–258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haugaasen, T and Peres, CA (2006) Floristic, edaphic and structural characteristics of flooded and unflooded forests in the lower rio purus region of Central Amazonia, Brazil. Acta Amazonica 36, 25–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holt, B, Lessard, JP, Borregaard, MK, Fritz, S, Araujo, MB, Dimitrov, D, Fabre, P-H, Graham, CH, Graves, GR, Jonsson, KA, Nogues-Bravo, D, Wang, Z, Whittaker, RJ, Fjeldsa, J and Rahbek, C (2013) An update of Wallace’s zoogeographic regions of the world. Science 339, 74–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holyoak, M, Leibold, MA and Holt, RD, eds. (2005) Metacommunities: Spatial Dynamics and Ecological Communities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Hurtt, GC and Pacala, SW (1995) The consequences of recruitment limitation– reconciling chance, history and competitive differences between plants. Journal of Theoretical Biology 176, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
IUCN-UNEP (2009) World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). Cambridge: UNEP-WCMC.Google Scholar
Kainer, KA, Wadt, LHO and Staudhammer, CL (2007) Explaining variation in Brazil nut fruit production. Forest Ecology and Management 250, 244–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamilar, JM and Beaudrot, L (2013) Understanding primate communities: recent developments and future directions. Evolutionary Anthropology 22, 174–185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kamilar, JM and Muldoon, KM (2010) The climatic niche diversity of Malagasy primates: a phylogenetic perspective. PLoS ONE 5, e11073.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kay, RF, Madden, RH, Van Schaik, CP and Higdon, D (1997) Primate species richness is determined by plant productivity: implications for conservation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 94, 13023–13027.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lawes, MJ and Eeley, AC (2000) Are local patterns of anthropoid primate diversity related to patterns of diversity at a larger scale? Journal of Biogeography 27, 1421–1425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKinnon, K, Hatta, G, Halim, H and Mangalik, A (1996) The Ecology of Kalimantan: Indonesian Borneo. Singapore: Periplus Editions.Google Scholar
Marshall, AJ, Ancrenaz, M, Brearley, FQ, Fredriksson, GM, Ghaffar, N, Heydon, M, Husson, SJ, Leighton, M, McConkey, KR, Morrough-Bernard, HC, Proctor, J, Van Schaik, CP, Yeager, CP and Wich, SA (2009) The effects of forest phenology and floristics on populations of bornean and sumatran orangutans: are Sumatran forests more productive than Bornean forests? In Wich, SA, Utami, S, Mitra Setia, T, and van Schaik, C (eds), Orangutans: Geographic Variation in Behavioral Ecology and Conservation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 97–117.Google Scholar
Marshall, AJ and Wich, SA (2016) Why conserve primates? In Wich, SA and Marshall, AJ (eds), An Introduction to Primate Conservation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 13–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, AJ, Beaudrot, L and Wittmer, H (2014) Responses of primates and other frugivorous vertebrates to plant resource variability over space and time at Gunung Palung National Park. International Journal of Primatology 35, 1178–1201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, AJ, Meijaard, E, Van Cleave, E and Sheil, D (2016) Charisma counts: the presence of great apes affects the allocation of research effort in the paleotropics. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 14, 13–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muldoon, KM and Goodman, SM (2010) Ecological biogeography of Malagasy non-volant mammals: community structure is correlated with habitat. Journal of Biogeography 37, 1144–1159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paoli, GD, Wells, PL, Meijaard, E, Struebig, MJ, Marshall, AJ, Obidzinski, K, Tan, A, Rafiastanto, A, Yaap, B, Slik, JWF, Morel, A, Perumal, B, Wielaard, N, Husson, S and D’Arcy, L (2010) Biodiversity conservation in the redd. Carbon Balance and Management 5, 7–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peres, CA (1997) Primate community structure at twenty Western Amazonian flooded and unflooded forests. Journal of Tropical Ecology 13, 381–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pimm, SL, Jenkins, CN, Abell, R, Brooks, TM, Gittleman, JL, Joppa, LN, Raven, PH, Roberts, CM and Sexton, JO (2014) The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection. Science 344, 1246752.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Slik, JWF, Aiba, S, Bastian, M, Brearley, FQ, Channon, CH, Eichhorn, KAO, Fredriksson, G, Kartawinata, K, Laumonier, Y, Manson, A, Marjokorpi, A, Meijaard, E, Morley, RJ, Nagamasu, H, Nilus, R, Nurtjahya, E, Payne, J, Permana, A, Poulsen, AD, Raes, N, Riswan, S, Van Schaik, CP, Sheil, D, Sidiyasa, K, Suzuki, E, Van Valkenburg, JLCH, Webb, CO, Wich, S, Yoneda, T, Zakari, R and Zweifel, N (2011) Soils on exposed sunda shelf shaped biogeographic patterns in the equatorial forests of Southeast Asia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 108, 12343–12347.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Slik, JWF, Raes, N, Aiba, S, Brearley, FQ, Cannon, CH, Meijaard, E, Nagamasu, H, Nilus, R, Paoli, G, Poulsen, AD, Sheil, D, Suzuki, E, Van Valkenburg, JLCH, Webb, CO, Wilkie, P and Wulffraat, S (2009) Environmental correlates for tropical tree diversity and distribution patterns in Borneo. Diversity and Distributions 15, 523–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smouse, PE, Long, JC and Sokal, RR (1986) Multiple regression and correlation extensions of the mantel test of matrix correspondence. Systematic Zoology 35, 627–632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soininen, J, McDonald, R and Hillebrand, H (2007) The distance decay of similarity in ecological communities. Ecography 30, 3–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinbauer, MJ, Dolos, K, Reineking, B and Beierkuhnlein, C (2013) Current measures for distance decay in similarity of species composition are influenced by study extent and grain size. Global Ecology and Biogeography 21, 1203–1212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinitz, O, Heller, J, Tsoar, A, Rotem, D and Kadmon, R (2005) Predicting regional patterns of similarity in species composition for conservation planning. Conservation Biology 19, 1978–1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swenson, NG (2013) The assembly of tropical tree communities– the advances and shortcomings of phylogenetic and functional trait analyses. Ecography 36, 264–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Schaik, CP, Marshall, AJ and Wich, SA (2009) Geographical variation in orangutan behavior and biology. In Wich, SA, Utami, S, Mitra Setia, T and van Schaik, C (eds), Orangutans: Geographic Variation in Behavioral Ecology and Conservation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 351–361.Google Scholar
Wich, SA and Van Schaik, CP (2000) The impact of El Niño on mast fruiting in Sumatra and elsewhere in Malesia. Journal of Tropical Ecology 16, 563–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar