Understanding the relative roles of local environmental, geo‐climatic and spatial factors for taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic β‐diversity of stream fishes in a large basin, Northeast China

Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to determine the relative roles of local environmental ( Local ), geo‐climatic ( Geo ), and spatial ( Spatial ) factors to taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic β ‐diversity of stream fish in a large basin in Northeast China. We quantified the current biodiversity patterns of fish communities in the Hun‐Tai River using β ‐diversity. We assessed (i) corresponding contributions of turnover and nestedness within the taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic β ‐diversity of fishes; (ii) correlations among β ‐diversity facets (i.e., taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic facets); (iii) relative contributions of Local , Geo , and Spatial factors to β ‐diversity. We collected fish communities from 171 sampling sites. Mantel tests were used to examine the correlation of three facets of β ‐diversity and their components (i.e., total, nestedness, and turnover). Distance‐based redundancy analysis and variation partitioning assess the relative contributions of Local , Geo , and Spatial factors to β ‐diversity. We found that turnover is the main driving mechanism for β ‐diversity in fish. Among the facets of β ‐diversity, taxonomic and phylogenetic facets have strong ecological information association. Spatial factors have a general contribution to various facets of β ‐diversity and its components. From aspects of fish β ‐diversity conservation, connectivity and habitat heterogeneity need to be maintained in the entire aquatic environment. In addition, protecting taxonomic β ‐diversity is helpful for maintaining phylogenetic β ‐diversity.

Local environmental and spatial factors are associated with multiple facets of riverine fish β‐diversity across spatial scales and seasons

“…The relationships between fish TDβ and PDβ were extremely strong, thereby supporting our second hypothesis (H2). Similar findings have been confirmed for Chinese angiosperm (Qian et al, 2020) and riverine fish (Wu et al, 2022), indicating that closely related species are more taxonomically similar than those distantly related. The rationale behind this result probably results from the dominant role of turnover for both facets of β-diversity.…”

“…Peláez and Pavanelli (2019) found similar results in a neotropical river, with local environment accounting for more variation in turnover of fish TDβ and FDβ than spatial isolation, yet the opposite scenario was true for nestedness. However, other related studies have confirmed that both turnover and nestedness were associated with environmental variables or spatial factors (Heino & Tolonen, 2017;Jiang et al, 2021;Wu et al, 2022) (Heino, 2011). We speculate that dispersal limitation, instead of mass effect, is of more importance in affecting fish communities because the present study was conducted in a transitional zone of mountains and basins with a relatively broad spatial extent (20,440 km 2 ).…”

“…The rationale behind this result probably results from the dominant role of turnover for both facets of β-diversity. Moreover, spatial scale and human activities also could contribute to the high correlation between TDβ and PDβ (Wu et al, 2022) (Branco et al, 2020;Wu et al, 2022). Hence, the combined use of the two respective diversity facets may be more informative than using just one for understanding metacommunity dynamics.…”

“…Firstly, given the extensive abiotic gradient of the study area (Xia et al, 2022) and that taxonomic turnover may not necessarily result in functional and phylogenetic turnover (Wu et al, 2021), we predicted that three facets of fish β ‐diversity should be determined mainly by turnover, yet TD β should be comparatively higher than FD β and PD β (H1; Figure 1; Li, Heino, et al, 2020). Secondly, we expected that TD β and PD β should be strongly correlated, whereas the other two diversity combinations may show weak relationships because they contain complementary information (H2; Figure 1; Wu et al, 2022). Thirdly, we anticipated that both environmental and spatial effects should be relevant in driving fish β ‐diversity, but their relative role may vary with diversity facets (or phenomena), network positions, and seasons (H3; Figure 1).…”

“…Figure 1; Wu et al, 2022). Thirdly, we anticipated that both environmental and spatial effects should be relevant in driving fish βdiversity, but their relative role may vary with diversity facets (or phenomena), network positions, and seasons (H3; Figure 1).…”