Climate and geographic distance are more influential than rivers on the beta diversity of passerine birds in Amazonia

Journal article

Isadora E Fluck, Nilton Cáceres, Carla D Hendges, Mariana do Nascimento Brum, Cristian S Dambros
Ecography, vol. 43(6), 2020, pp. 860-868

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.04753

Cite

APA Click to copy
Fluck, I. E., Cáceres, N., Hendges, C. D., do Nascimento Brum, M., & Dambros, C. S. (2020). Climate and geographic distance are more influential than rivers on the beta diversity of passerine birds in Amazonia. Ecography, 43(6), 860–868. https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.04753

Chicago/Turabian Click to copy
Fluck, Isadora E, Nilton Cáceres, Carla D Hendges, Mariana do Nascimento Brum, and Cristian S Dambros. “Climate and Geographic Distance Are More Influential than Rivers on the Beta Diversity of Passerine Birds in Amazonia.” Ecography 43, no. 6 (2020): 860–868.

MLA Click to copy
Fluck, Isadora E., et al. “Climate and Geographic Distance Are More Influential than Rivers on the Beta Diversity of Passerine Birds in Amazonia.” Ecography, vol. 43, no. 6, 2020, pp. 860–68, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.04753.

BibTeX Click to copy

@article{isadora2020a,
  title = {Climate and geographic distance are more influential than rivers on the beta diversity of passerine birds in Amazonia},
  year = {2020},
  issue = {6},
  journal = {Ecography},
  pages = {860-868},
  volume = {43},
  doi = { https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.04753},
  author = {Fluck, Isadora E and Cáceres, Nilton and Hendges, Carla D and do Nascimento Brum, Mariana and Dambros, Cristian S}
}

Variation in the spatial structure of communities in terms of species composition (beta diversity) is affected by different ecological processes, such as environmental filtering and dispersal limitation. Large rivers are known as barriers for species dispersal (riverine hypothesis) in tropical regions. However, when organisms are not dispersal limited by geographic barriers, other factors, such as climatic conditions and geographic distance per se, may affect species distribution. In order to investigate the relative contribution of major rivers, climate and geographic distance on Passeriformes beta diversity, we divided Amazonia into 549 grid cells (1° of latitude and longitude) and obtained data of species occurrence, climate and geographic position for each cell. Beta diversity was measured using taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional metrics of composition. The influence of climatic variables, geographic distance and rivers on these metrics was tested using regression analyses. Passerine beta diversity is characterized mainly by the change in species taxonomic identity and in phylogenetic lineages across climatic gradients and over geographic distance. However, species with similar traits are found throughout the entire Amazonia. The size of rivers was proportional to their effect on species composition. However, climate and geographic distance are relatively more important than rivers for Amazonian taxonomic and phylogenetic species composition.

"Spatial variation in bird taxonomic (a), phylogenetic (b) and functional (c) composition in the Amazonian Forest. Changes in composition are represented by ordering scores (indicated by numbers from −0.3 to 0.2; colors)."

The higher the difference between colors, the higher the difference in composition.

" Variance in bird taxonomic (a), phylogenetic (b) and functional (c) composition explained by the main Amazonian rivers (barplot and blue circle in Venn diagram), geographic distance and climate. The variance explained by rivers was decomposed into variance exclusively explained by each individual river (i.e. could not be attributed to the presence of other rivers; black bars) and total variance explained by each individual river (shared with other rivers; grey bars). "