Journal
ACTA OECOLOGICA-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY
Volume 68, Issue -, Pages 1-10Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.actao.2015.06.006
Keywords
Diversity pattern; Climate; Environmental variation; NDVI; Spatial heterogeneity
Categories
Funding
- Consejeria de Medio Ambiente from the Junta de Andalucia (Spain)
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We examined the relationships between different environmental factors and the alpha and beta-diversity of terrestrial vertebrates (birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles) in a Mediterranean region at the landscape level. We investigated whether the mechanisms underlying alpha and beta-diversity patterns are influenced by energy availability, habitat heterogeneity and temporal variability and if the drivers of the diversity patterns differed between both components of diversity. We defined alpha-diversity as synonym of species richness whereas beta-diversity was measured as distinctiveness. We evaluated a total of 13 different predictors using generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) analysis. Habitat spatial heterogeneity increased alpha-diversity, but contrastingly, it did not significantly affect beta-diversity among sites. Disturbed landscapes may show higher habitat spatial variation and higher alpha-diversity due to the contribution of highly generalist species that are wide-distributed and do not differ in composition (beta-diversity) among different sites within the region. Contrastingly, higher beta-diversity levels were negatively related to more stable sites in terms of temporal environmental variation. This negative relationship between environmental stability and beta-diversity levels is explained in terms of species adaptation to the local environmental conditions. Our study highlights the importance of temporal environmental variability in maintaining beta-diversity patterns under highly variable environmental conditions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
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