Beta‐diversity gradients of butterflies along productivity axes

Aim: Several lines of evidence suggest that beta diversity, or dissimilarity in species composition, should increase with productivity: (1) the latitudinal species richness gradient is most closely related to productivity and associated latitudinal beta-diversity relationships have been described, and (2) the scale dependence of the productivity-diversity relationship implies that there should be a positive productivity-beta-diversity relationship. However, such a pattern has not yet been demonstrated at broad scales. We test if there is a gradient of increasing beta diversity with productivity. Location: Canada. Methods: Canada was clustered into regions of similar productivity regimes along three remotely sensed productivity axes (minimum and integrated annual productivity, seasonality of productivity) and elevation. The overall (β j), turnover (β sim) and nestedness (β nes) components of beta diversity within each productivity regime were estimated with pairwise dissimilarity metrics and related to cluster productivity with partial linear regression and with spatial autoregression. Tests were performed for all species, productivity breadth-based subsets (e.g. species occurring in many and a moderate number of productivity regimes), and pre- and post-1970 butterfly records. Beta diversity between adjacent clusters along the productivity gradients was also evaluated. Results: Within-cluster β j and β sim increased with productivity and decreased with seasonality. The converse was true for β nes. All species subsets responded similarly; however, productivity-beta-diversity relationships were weaker for the post-1970 temporal subset and strongest for species of moderate breadth. Between-cluster beta diversity (β j) and nestedness (β nes) declined with productivity. Main conclusions: As predicted, beta diversity of communities within productivity regimes was observed to increase with productivity. This pattern was driven largely by a gradient of species turnover. Therefore, beta diversity may make an important contribution to the broad-scale gradient of species richness with productivity. However, this species richness gradient dominates regional beta diversity between productivity regimes, resulting in decreasing between-productivity dissimilarity with productivity driven by a concurrent decline in nestedness.

[1]  Dawn M. Kaufman,et al.  LATITUDINAL GRADIENTS OF BIODIVERSITY:Pattern,Process,Scale,and Synthesis , 2003 .

[2]  J. Kerr,et al.  Historically calibrated predictions of butterfly species' range shift using global change as a pseudo-experiment. , 2009, Ecology.

[3]  K. Gaston,et al.  Are there latitudinal gradients in species turnover , 2003 .

[4]  Robert K. Colwell,et al.  A new statistical approach for assessing similarity of species composition with incidence and abundance data , 2004 .

[5]  Tian Zhang,et al.  BIRCH: A New Data Clustering Algorithm and Its Applications , 1997, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.

[6]  Jeremy T. Kerr,et al.  Habitat heterogeneity as a determinant of mammal species richness in high-energy regions , 1997, Nature.

[7]  Nicholas C. Coops,et al.  The development of a Canadian dynamic habitat index using multi-temporal satellite estimates of canopy light absorbance , 2008 .

[8]  A. Peterson,et al.  New developments in museum-based informatics and applications in biodiversity analysis. , 2004, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[9]  R. Ricklefs,et al.  A latitudinal gradient in large-scale beta diversity for vascular plants in North America. , 2007, Ecology letters.

[10]  David Storch,et al.  Structure of the species–energy relationship , 2004, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[11]  G. Luck,et al.  The relationships between net primary productivity, human population density and species conservation , 2007 .

[12]  J. Kerr,et al.  Remotely sensed habitat diversity predicts butterfly species richness and community similarity in Canada , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[13]  P. Rodríguez,et al.  Beta diversity and latitude in North American mammals: testing the hypothesis of covariation , 2004 .

[14]  M. Brändle,et al.  Latitudinal variation of diversity in European freshwater animals is not concordant across habitat types , 2008 .

[15]  M. Willig,et al.  The Relationship Between Productivity and Species Richness , 1999 .

[16]  Eric E. Porter,et al.  Does Herbivore Diversity Depend on Plant Diversity? The Case of California Butterflies , 2002, The American Naturalist.

[17]  R. Ricklefs,et al.  Host specificity of Lepidoptera in tropical and temperate forests , 2007, Nature.

[18]  P. White,et al.  The distance decay of similarity in biogeography and ecology , 1999 .

[19]  A. Peterson,et al.  Scale dependency of diversity components estimated from primary biodiversity data and distribution maps , 2007 .

[20]  Richard Field,et al.  Spatial species‐richness gradients across scales: a meta‐analysis , 2009 .

[21]  W. Oechel,et al.  Observational Evidence of Recent Change in the Northern High-Latitude Environment , 2000 .

[22]  R. Whittaker.  Evolution and measurement of species diversity , 1972 .

[23]  Helmut Hillebrand,et al.  On the Generality of the Latitudinal Diversity Gradient , 2004, The American Naturalist.

[24]  Robert K. Colwell,et al.  Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation. , 1994, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[25]  R. Latifovic,et al.  Trends in vegetation NDVI from 1 km AVHRR data over Canada for the period 1985–2006 , 2009 .

[26]  A. Roth,et al.  The shuttle radar topography mission—a new class of digital elevation models acquired by spaceborne radar , 2003 .

[27]  H. Qian.  Beta diversity in relation to dispersal ability for vascular plants in North America , 2009 .

[28]  Andrew Gonzalez,et al.  Scale Dependence of Species‐Energy Relationships: Evidence from Fishes in Thousands of Lakes , 2008, The American Naturalist.

[29]  D. Roy,et al.  The distributions of a wide range of taxonomic groups are expanding polewards , 2006 .

[30]  C. Parmesan,et al.  Poleward shifts in geographical ranges of butterfly species associated with regional warming , 1999, Nature.

[31]  Nicholas C. Coops,et al.  An environmental domain classification of Canada using earth observation data for biodiversity assessment , 2009, Ecol. Informatics.

[32]  A. Baselga.  Partitioning the turnover and nestedness components of beta diversity , 2010 .

[33]  S. Running,et al.  Global products of vegetation leaf area and fraction absorbed PAR from year one of MODIS data , 2002 .

[34]  Dean L. Urban,et al.  Beta Diversity and Nature Reserve System Design in the Yukon, Canada , 2005 .

[35]  H. Qian.  A latitudinal gradient of beta diversity for exotic vascular plant species in North America , 2008 .

[36]  M. Willig,et al.  Gradients of species density and turnover in marsupials : A hemispheric perspective , 1997 .

[37]  K. Gaston,et al.  The distribution of bird species in the New World: Patterns in species turnover , 1996 .

[38]  R. G. Davies,et al.  Spatial turnover in the global avifauna , 2007, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[39]  M. Willig,et al.  GEOGRAPHICAL ECOLOGY AT THE COMMUNITY LEVEL: PERSPECTIVES ON THE DIVERSITY OF NEW WORLD BATS , 2002 .

[40]  Ethan P. White,et al.  Disparity between range map- and survey-based analyses of species richness: patterns, processes and implications , 2005 .

[41]  Kevin J. Gaston,et al.  The geographical structure of British bird distributions: diversity, spatial turnover and scale , 2001 .

[42]  W. Jetz,et al.  Linking global turnover of species and environments , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[43]  C. Badgley,et al.  The latitudinal gradient of beta diversity in relation to climate and topography for mammals in North America , 2009 .

[44]  Joshua H. Viers,et al.  Beta diversity and the scale‐dependence of the productivity‐diversity relationship: a test in the Californian serpentine flora , 2006 .

[45]  Jonathan M. Chase,et al.  Connectivity, scale‐dependence, and the productivity–diversity relationship , 2004 .

[46]  Kalle Ruokolainen,et al.  Analyzing or explaining beta diversity? Understanding the targets of different methods of analysis. , 2006, Ecology.

[47]  P. Legendre,et al.  ANALYZING BETA DIVERSITY: PARTITIONING THE SPATIAL VARIATION OF COMMUNITY COMPOSITION DATA , 2005 .

[48]  Robert I. McDonald,et al.  The distance decay of similarity in ecological communities , 2007 .

[49]  Jeremy T. Kerr,et al.  Human impacts on environment–diversity relationships: evidence for biotic homogenization from butterfly species richness patterns , 2007 .

[50]  Richard Field,et al.  ENERGY, WATER, AND BROAD‐SCALE GEOGRAPHIC PATTERNS OF SPECIES RICHNESS , 2003 .

[51]  Mathew A. Leibold,et al.  CYCLIC ASSEMBLY TRAJECTORIES AND SCALE‐DEPENDENT PRODUCTIVITY–DIVERSITY RELATIONSHIPS , 2004 .

[52]  H. Hillebrand,et al.  A multivariate analysis of beta diversity across organisms and environments. , 2007, Ecology.

[53]  P. Legendre,et al.  Partialling out the spatial component of ecological variation , 1992 .

[54]  T. Rangel,et al.  Environmental drivers of beta‐diversity patterns in New‐World birds and mammals , 2009 .

[55]  N. Coops,et al.  How do butterflies define ecosystems? A comparison of ecological regionalization schemes , 2011 .

[56]  Walter Jetz,et al.  Species richness, hotspots, and the scale dependence of range maps in ecology and conservation , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[57]  C. Braak.  Canonical Correspondence Analysis: A New Eigenvector Technique for Multivariate Direct Gradient Analysis , 1986 .

[58]  Kalle Ruokolainen,et al.  Analysing botanical collecting effort in Amazonia and correcting for it in species range estimation , 2007 .

[59]  C. Flather,et al.  Reserve networks based on richness hotspots and representation vary with scale. , 2006, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[60]  Jonathan M. Chase,et al.  Spatial scale dictates the productivity–biodiversity relationship , 2002, Nature.

[61]  K. Gaston,et al.  Species‐energy relationships at the macroecological scale: a review of the mechanisms , 2005, Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.