Habitat filtering drives the local distribution of congeneric species in a Brazilian white‐sand flooded tropical forest

Abstract

The investigation of ecological processes that maintain species coexistence is revealing in naturally disturbed environments such as the white‐sand tropical forest, which is subject to periodic flooding that might pose strong habitat filtering to tree species. Congeneric species are a good model to investigate the relative importance of ecological processes that maintain high species diversity because they tend to exploit the same limiting resources and/or have similar tolerance limits to the same environmental conditions due to their close phylogenetic relationship. We aim to find evidence for the action and relative importance of different processes hypothesized to maintain species coexistence in a white‐sand flooded forest in Brazil, taking advantage of data on the detailed spatial structure of populations of congeneric species. Individuals of three Myrcia species were tagged, mapped, and measured for diameter at soil height in a 1‐ha plot. We also sampled seven environmental variables in the plot. We employed several spatial point process models to investigate the possible action of habitat filtering, interspecific competition, and dispersal limitation. Habitat filtering was the most important process driving the local distribution of the three Myrcia species, as they showed associations, albeit of different strength, to environmental variables related to flooding. We did not detect spatial patterns, such as spatial segregation and smaller size of nearby neighbors, that would be consistent with interspecific competition among the three congeneric species and other co‐occurring species. Even though congeners were spatially independent, they responded to differences in the environment. Last, dispersal limitation only led to spatial associations of different size classes for one of the species. Given that white‐sand flooded forests are highly threatened in Brazil, the preservation of their different habitats is of utmost importance to the maintenance of high species richness, as flooding drives the distribution of species in the community.

Disentangling the effects of species interactions and environmental factors on the spatial pattern and coexistence of two congenericPinusspecies in a transitional climatic zone

“…Closely related congeneric species tend to share many similar phenotypic traits and ecological traits and utilize shared resources in similar ways, making it impossible for them to un‐coexist stably (Mooney et al, 2008 ; Ribeiro et al, 2021a ; Simberloff, 1970 ). Previous studies have shown strong negative associations between congeneric species with similar ecological properties (Wang et al, 2010 ).…”

“…Previous studies have shown that habitat specialization may support the coexistence of congeneric species in sympatry (Allié et al, 2015 ; Itoh et al, 2010 ; Yamasaki et al, 2013 ). Ribeiro et al ( 2021 ) found that three congeneric species were spatially independent and exhibited similar habitat preferences in Brazilian white‐sand flooded tropical forests. Our hypotheses need to be further evaluated under the context of environmental influence on the spatial distribution of species.…”

“…Niche theory (Kraft et al, 2015 ) predicts that closely related species compete more intensely than distantly related species due to their requirements for similar resources. Moreover, survival under resource‐limited conditions may prevent the coexistence of closely related species (Mooney et al, 2008 ; Ribeiro et al, 2021 ; Simberloff, 1970 ), as reported for Quercus species (Yuan et al, 2018 ) and Lauraceae species (Li et al, 2014 ). Although highly similar species may delay competitive exclusion through nearly neutral dynamics, species differences are ultimately required for stable coexistence (Chesson, 2000a ; Levine & Hillerislambers, 2009 ).…”

Spatial facilitation and competition regulate tree species assembly in a tropical dry forest

“…Spatial patterns may conserve an imprint of past processes, and therefore constitute an ecological archive from which we may recover information about the underlying processes (Wiegand et al, 2003(Wiegand et al, , 2009Grimm et al, 2005;McIntire and Fajardo, 2009;Perea et al, 2021). Indeed, spatial patterns of tree species have provided valuable information to obtain insights on intra and inter-specific interactions as well as forest community structure (Stoll and Bergius, 2005;Wiegand et al, 2012), and spatial pattern analysis is a focus of current forest ecological research (Wiegand and Moloney, 2014;Velázquez et al, 2016;Ben-Said, 2021;Nguyen et al, 2021;Perea et al, 2021;Ribeiro et al, 2021;Wiegand et al, 2021). Techniques of spatial point pattern analysis have also been used to detect spatial association patterns and signatures of habitat association, facilitation and competition in TDFs (e.g., Espinosa et al, 2016;Álvarez-Yépiz et al, 2017;Gusmán-M et al, 2018).…”

Spatial point-pattern analysis as a powerful tool in identifying pattern-process relationships in plant ecology: an updated review

“…Studying spatial association between trees at both intra-and interspecific levels is important to reveal the existence of interactions and their types (Jia et al 2016). SPPA has been mostly carried out for woody species compared to herbaceous plants (but see Riginos et al 2005;De Luis et al 2008;Raventós et al 2010) and various mechanisms controlling species spatial patterns are currently investigated in temperate (Getzin et al 2006;Hao et al 2007;Wang et al 2010a;Zhang et al 2010Zhang et al , 2013Martínez et al 2013;Liu et al 2014;Yao et al 2016;Carrer et al 2018;Wang et al 2018;Szmyt and Tarasiuk 2018;Zhang et al 2020), tropical (Wiegand et al 2007a;Lan et al 2012;Miao et al 2018;Nguyen et al 2016;Cordero et al 2016;Ribeiro et al 2021, Nguyen et al 2018a and Mediterranean regions (Camarero et al 2005;De Luis et al 2008;Lingua et al 2008;Comas et al 2009;Raventós et al 2010;Garcia-Cervigon et al 2017;Abellanas and Pérez-Moreno 2018;Ben-Said et al 2020). Assuming the crucial role of biotic processes to be a driver of species spatial pattern, various environmental factors can be involved in structuring plant communities including water availability (Zheng et al 2017), soil nutrients (Riginos et al 2005;Zhao et al 2015), moisture (Fajardo et al 2006;…”