Unravelling the factors affecting multiple facets of macroinvertebrate beta diversity in the World's Third Pole

Abstract

Aim: Disentangling how stochastic and deterministic processes contribute to variation in beta diversity is a common goal for ecologists and biogeographers. However, such studies are scarce in alpine streams, especially when different diversity facets are considered. Here, we combined different approaches to examine the drivers of taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional beta diversities, and discussed how our results can inform community assembly and biodiversity conservation in Tibetan streams.Location: Tibet plateau. Taxon: Macroinvertebrates. Methods:We first partitioned multiple facets of beta diversity (Btotal) into species replacement (Brepl) and richness difference (Brich) as well as local (LCBD) or species (SCBD) contributions. Then, we applied ordination methods to examine the relative importance of local, climatic and spatial factors on Btotal, Brepl and Brich, respectively. We explored community assembly rules using null models based on trait and phylogeny structure.Results: Btotal displayed high values and was primarily driven by Brepl. Local, climatic and spatial factors were poor predictors of the different facets of beta diversity. Null models showed that the diversity metrics did not differ from those of null expectations, suggesting that most individual streams might be occupied by species that were merely random draws from the functional or phylogenetic pools available in this region. Partitioning beta diversity into LCBD and SCBD implied that the upper canyon streams were more unique than those at lower elevations and can be valuable for biodiversity conservation.Main Conclusions: Analysing multiple facets of beta diversity provide important insights into community assembly that cannot be acquired by focusing on taxonomic diversity only. Using a multi-faceted approach involving species, phylogenetic and trait data, our study not only sheds light on the assembly mechanisms of macroinvertebrate communities in alpine streams, but also bring inspirations for biodiversity conservation in the 'World's Third Pole' that is highly sensitive to global change.

Multiple processes jointly determine ecological uniqueness across forest plant life‐forms in Northeast China

“…It should be noted that species contributions to beta diversity (i.e. SCBD) derived from and some unique functional traits could also represent ecological uniqueness to some extent (Legendre & De Cáceres, 2013; Li et al., 2023), thus to avoid confusion, the ecological uniqueness only refers to the LCBD (i.e. LCBD indices) in the present study.…”

“…It should be noted that species contributions to beta diversity (i.e. SCBD) derived from BD total and some unique functional traits could also represent ecological uniqueness to some extent (Legendre & De Cáceres, 2013;Li et al, 2023), thus to avoid confusion, the eco- (Legendre & De Cáceres, 2013). It can be decomposed by the total beta diversity described above and is calculated as: where s ij refers to the square of the difference between the element value y ij in the matrix and the mean value of jth column; the LCBD indices measure how unique a site is compared with the centroid of all sites, that is, the average conditions of species composition of the entire area.…”

Native fish assemblages in natural lakes across Japan: Endemism deterioration lasting centuries

“…Furthermore, applying an expanded algorithm to this methodology enables the quantification of both the phylogenetic (pLCBD) and functional (fLCBD) uniqueness of fish assemblages in the studied lakes, akin to the tLCBD (Nakamura et al., 2020). Despite the growing number of literature utilizing the tLCBD index as a guidance indicator for biodiversity conservation (da Silva et al., 2018; Xia et al., 2022), a considerable proportion of such studies lack the inclusion of phylogenetic and functional information (Hill et al., 2021; Li et al., 2023; Santos et al., 2021). Our study design thus presents a promising chance to enhance the understanding of the ecological uniqueness of native fish assemblages from a more comprehensive and integrated perspective.…”

Environmental Factors Shape the Differences in Biodiversity-Area Relationships in Riverine Macroinvertebrates of Two Rivers in the Tibetan Plateau in China

“…This resulted in discovering a total of 30 articles. In the 30 articles, we searched for study area and study species, resulting in 7 relevant research papers (including 2 articles in Chinese) [55][56][57][58][59][60][61] from which species inventories could be extracted for specific sample sites. We obtained benthic macroinvertebrate presence/absence data from tables, appendices, and associated databases cited.…”