Linking species functional traits of terrestrial vertebrates and environmental filters: A case study in temperate mountain systems

Abstract

Knowledge on the relationships between species functional traits and environmental filters is key to understanding the mechanisms underlying the current patterns of biodiversity loss from a multi-taxa perspective. The aim of this study was to identify the main environmental factors driving the functional structure of a terrestrial vertebrate community (mammals, breeding birds, reptiles and amphibians) in a temperate mountain system (the Cantabrian Mountains; NW Spain). Based on the Spanish Inventory of Terrestrial Vertebrate Species, we selected three functional traits (feeding guild, habitat use type and daily activity) and defined, for each trait, a set of functional groups considering vertebrate species with common functional characteristics. The community functional structure was evaluated by means of two functional indexes indicative of functional redundancy (species richness within each functional group) and functional diversity. Ordinary least squares regression and conditional autoregressive models were applied to determine the response of community functional structure to environmental filters (climate, topography, land cover, physiological state of vegetation, landscape heterogeneity and human influence). The results revealed that both functional redundancy and diversity of terrestrial vertebrates were non-randomly distributed across space; rather, they were driven by environmental filters. Climate, topography and human influence were the best predictors of community functional structure. The influence of land cover, physiological state of vegetation and landscape heterogeneity varied among functional groups. The results of this study are useful to identify the general assembly rules of species functional traits and to illustrate the importance of environmental filters in determining functional structure of terrestrial vertebrate communities in mountain systems.

High Temporal Beta Diversity in an Ant Metacommunity, With Increasing Temporal Functional Replacement Along the Elevational Gradient

“…We found that turnover was the main mechanism generating temporal taxonomic β-diversity, as expected based on the spatial pattern for ants and many other organisms (Perillo et al, 2017;da Silva et al, 2018;Kaltsas et al, 2018;Castro et al, 2020). The spatial variation in conditions and resources provide an environmental filter for species that have pre-adaptations to survive in different places (Heino and Tolonen, 2017;García-Llamas et al, 2019) leading to high rates of turnover of species. In this sense, the same processes would be occurring to generate the temporal pattern but related to ant activity: environmentally filtering ant species to be active in different seasons along all the elevational gradient.…”

When form does not predict function: Empirical evidence violates functional form hypotheses for marine macroalgae

“…One possibility is adopting a trait‐based approach for marine macroalgae. This framework was originally developed for terrestrial vegetation (Chapin, 1993; Eviner & Chapin, 2003; Grime, 1974; McGill et al., 2006; Voille et al., 2007; Wright et al., 2004) to understand mechanisms of community assembly and ecosystem functioning, but has been increasingly applied to other taxa such as marine phytoplankton (Edwards et al., 2013; Litchman & Klausmeier, 2008) and terrestrial fauna (García‐Llamas et al., 2019). There have been some promising recent efforts in this direction for marine macroalgae (Cappelatti et al., 2019; Jänes et al., 2017; Mauffrey et al., 2020; Stelling‐Wood et al., 2020), with functional traits successfully predicting in macroalgal productivity (Jänes et al., 2017) and associated community structure (Stelling‐Wood et al., 2020), as well as providing stronger links with macroalgal strategies and functions (Cappelatti et al., 2019; Mauffrey et al., 2020).…”

“…As the advantages of using functional groups are perceived to exceed their limitations, functional groups are used widely across many ecosystems and taxa. For example, functional groups have been applied to ecological studies as diverse as resource partitioning in grasslands (McLaren & Turkington, 2010) and forests (López‐Martínez et al., 2013), community assembly in marine macroalgae (Littler & Littler, 1984; Phillips et al., 1997), feeding strategies in birds (De Graaf et al., 1985) and herbivorous fishes (Cheal et al., 2010), habitat use of terrestrial vertebrates (García‐Llamas et al., 2019), and seasonal dynamics of phytoplankton (Reynolds, 1984). Furthermore, functional groups have been used in applications such as long‐term community monitoring (Green & Bellwood, 2009; Jaksic et al., 1996), community distribution and abundance models (García‐Llamas et al., 2019), and biodiversity shifts in response to environmental fluctuations (Suding et al., 2005).…”

The impacts of extreme climate change on mammals differ among functional groups at regional scale: The case of Iranian terrestrial mammals

“…type of habitats used by each species); and (5) locomotion type (see details of traits definitions and thresholds in Table S2). These traits have been commonly used to cluster species from different taxonomic groups into functional groups (e.g., García-Llamas et al, 2019;Hector et al, 1999;Newbold et al, 2020;Tilman et al, 1997) and are representative of many of the ecological roles that are played by species in ecosystems (e.g., body size and diet reflect the amount and type of resources that species consume, while locomotion influences mobility and thus ability to track suitable climates). Additionally, these traits have been found to influence overall climate risk for species (Pacifici et al, 2017(Pacifici et al, , 2018, and presumably associated groups respond similarly to the same set of environmental conditions (Newbold et al, 2020).…”