Figure 2 - uploaded by Christian König
Content may be subject to copyright.
Distance decay of similarity for different subsets based on (a) geographical setting, (b) island type, (c) taxonomic group and (d) functional group. For each subset, DS/2 denotes the distance after which similarity decreases by 50% (halving distance) and n denotes the number of unique pairwise combinations within the subset. Regression lines (white) were fitted using a log-binomial generalized linear model (GLM) with intercept of 1. Confidence intervals (red) were computed by subsampling the data 250 times, refitting the model and taking the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of the sampling distribution of coefficient estimates.

Distance decay of similarity for different subsets based on (a) geographical setting, (b) island type, (c) taxonomic group and (d) functional group. For each subset, DS/2 denotes the distance after which similarity decreases by 50% (halving distance) and n denotes the number of unique pairwise combinations within the subset. Regression lines (white) were fitted using a log-binomial generalized linear model (GLM) with intercept of 1. Confidence intervals (red) were computed by subsampling the data 250 times, refitting the model and taking the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of the sampling distribution of coefficient estimates.

Source publication
Article
Full-text available
Aim: To provide a global assessment of turnover in vascular plants across geographical settings and taxonomic and functional groups. We tested whether turnover and its spatial and environmental drivers are affected by the geographical setting and whether taxonomic and functional groups exhibit specific turnover patterns that are associated with the...

Similar publications

Article
Full-text available
The study revealed the occurrence of 330 species of vascular plants belonging to 261 genera and 97 families of the pharua researve forest of Bangladesh. Of the 330 species, Pteridophytes presented by 14 species under 12 genera and 11 families, Liliopsida by 73 species under 57 genera and 17 families, whereas Magnoliopsida is represented by 243 spec...

Citations

... Understanding how biodiversity varies across the globe is of particular importance 1,2 , especially in the face of increasing threats from global change 3 . Patterns and drivers of beta diversity provide key insights to understanding the spatial variation in biodiversity 4,5 . While classical measures of beta diversity focus on taxonomic composition, phylogenetic beta diversity quantifies differences in composition among sites due to the presence of differently related evolutionary lineages 6 and can further reveal how biodiversity patterns have changed through evolutionary time 7 . ...
... Also, similarities in phylogenetic composition may be low, but when ancient lineages are shared between these regions, phylogenetic beta diversity may reveal a high assemblage similarity that is not manifested in taxonomic beta diversity 6 , emphasizing the effects of dispersal history on phylogenetic and taxonomic beta diversity. Importantly, environmental filtering and dispersal history may jointly shape the variation in phylogenetic and taxonomic composition across space 5,16 . However, we largely do not know how much these two processes contribute to phylogenetic or taxonomic beta diversity 5,16 . ...
... Importantly, environmental filtering and dispersal history may jointly shape the variation in phylogenetic and taxonomic composition across space 5,16 . However, we largely do not know how much these two processes contribute to phylogenetic or taxonomic beta diversity 5,16 . ...
Article
Full-text available
Environmental filtering and dispersal history limit plant distributions and affect biogeographical patterns, but how their relative importance varies across evolutionary timescales is unresolved. Phylogenetic beta diversity quantifies dissimilarity in evolutionary relatedness among assemblages and might help resolve the ecological and biogeographical mechanisms structuring biodiversity. Here, we examined the effects of environmental dissimilarity and geographical distance on phylogenetic and taxonomic turnover for ~270,000 seed plant species globally and across evolutionary timescales. We calculated past and present dispersal barriers using palaeogeographical reconstructions and calculated geographical linear and least-cost distances, accounting for dispersal over water, mountains or areas with unsuitable climates. Environmental dissimilarity and geographical distance jointly explained most of the deviance in taxonomic (up to 86.4%) and phylogenetic turnover (65.6%). While environmental dissimilarity consistently showed strongly positive effects, the effect of geographical distance on phylogenetic turnover was less pronounced further back in evolutionary time. Past physiogeographical barriers explained a relatively low amount of the variation across all timescales, with a slight peak at intermediate timescales (20–50 Myr bp). Our results suggest that while old lineages have generally dispersed widely, the imprint of environmental filtering on range expansion persists, providing insights into biogeographical and evolutionary processes underlying global biodiversity patterns.
... Given that these island properties are likely to strongly impact beta diversity, it is to be expected that island beta diversity may differ from beta diversity on continental equivalents. Nonetheless, both the extent to which beta diversity depends on island attributes and how beta diversity differs from similar-sized areas in continents (i.e., on continental area equivalents, CAE; Jamoneau et al. 2022) remain poorly understood, particularly at a global scale (but see König, Weigelt, and Kreft 2017). ...
... In some species groups, only good dispersers could colonise northern territories, causing incomplete recolonisation with a subsequent effect on beta diversity among regions (Gómez- Rodríguez and Baselga 2018). This process has been proposed as an explanation for the differences in distance-decay between oceanic islands, continental islands and continents (König, Weigelt, and Kreft 2017;Gómez-Rodríguez and Baselga 2018). Moreover, incomplete colonisation could be linked with disharmony in island biota. ...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract Aim To evaluate the patterns of stream diatom beta diversity in islands vs. continents across scales, to relate community similarities with spatial and environmental distances and to investigate the role of island characteristics in shaping insular diatom beta diversity. Location Africa, America, Europe, and Pacific. Time period Present. Major taxa studied Stream diatoms. Methods We compared diatom beta diversity between islands and continents at large scales (within biogeographic region) in two study regions (America and Europe) and at small scales (within islands or equivalent areas in continents) in three regions (Africa, America, and Europe) by partitioning beta diversity into turnover and nestedness components. We used a partial Mantel test and distance-decay curves to assess how diatom beta diversity on islands and continents is affected by spatial and environmental distances. Finally, using island data from all four regions, we evaluated the relationship between island beta diversity and island latitude, area, age, and isolation using linear models. Results At large scales, mean dissimilarities were higher on islands than in continents in Europe but lower in America. At smaller scales, the differences varied mostly depending on island isolation. Beta diversity was mainly caused by species turnover. Partial Mantel test and distance-decay curves revealed that spatial and environmental distances shaped diatom beta diversity at large, but not at small scales. Moreover, diatom beta diversity on islands was affected by island latitude, age, and isolation, but not by island area. Main conclusions Diatom beta diversity on islands vs. continents and its responses to spatial and environmental factors are scale- and region-dependent. Incomplete colonisation, evolutionary processes and environmental filtering likely contribute to insular beta diversity, which further varies with island latitude, age, and isolation. This study sheds new light on beta diversity of microorganisms on islands and suggests that beta diversity should be explicitly considered in island biogeographical research.
... El estudio del distance-decay constituye uno de los métodos fundamentales de análisis de la diversidad beta (Morlon et al., 2008;Anderson et al., 2011). De hecho, el patrón de distance-decay emerge como un patrón universal (Nekola & White, 1999;Soininen et al., 2007a;Soininen et al., 2007b;Graco-Roza et al., 2022), ya que se ha demostrado que existe un descenso de la similitud biológica con la distancia en diferentes grupos biológicos (Poulin, 2003;Svenning et al., 2011;Astorga et al., 2012;Qian & Ricklefs, 2012;Wetzel et al., 2012;Saito et al., 2015), hábitats (Jiménez-Valverde et al., 2010;Olden et al., 2010;Si et al., 2015;Chust et al., 2016;Tovo & Favretti, 2018), escalas espaciales (Buckley & Jetz, 2008;Bell, 2010;Freijeiro & Baselga, 2016;König et al., 2017;Arribas et al., 2020), y niveles de organización biológica (Diniz-Filho & Bini, 2011;Baselga et al., 2013;Gómez-Rodríguez et al., 2019;Gómez-Rodríguez et al., 2020;Baselga et al., 2022). Por tanto, una de las preguntas fundamentales en ecología de comunidades y biogeografía no es sólo si existe o no un patrón de distance-decay en las comunidades de estudio sino, sobre todo, cuál es la intensidad de dicho descenso y si es diferente entre grupos biológicos con rasgos morfológicos o funcionales diferentes. ...
Article
Full-text available
El descenso de la similitud biótica con la distancia espacial (en inglés, distance-decay) es uno de los patrones universales en Ecología y Biogeografía. Este patrón surge porque cuanto más alejadas están dos comunidades biológicas, menor es el número de especies que tienen en común. Dicho descenso de la similitud con la distancia puede ajustarse mediante modelos estadísticos, que deben ser no lineales (p. ej. Modelos Lineales Generalizados, GLM, con función exponencial o power-law) y tener en cuenta la dependencia por pares de los datos a la hora de calcular la significación del modelo. La dependencia por pares es inherente a los modelos de distance-decay, ya que tanto los valores de similitud biótica como la distancia espacial entre comunidades involucran, para su cálculo, dos comunidades biológicas. Por tanto, una misma comunidad biológica está implicada en el cálculo de varios valores de similitud/distancia, dando lugar a una pseudorreplicación de los datos que viola una asunción básica de muchos tests estadísticos. Este aspecto es de máxima importancia ya que la correcta modelización del patrón de distance-decay es clave para poder inferir los procesos ecológicos, evolutivos o biogeográficos responsables del descenso en la similitud biótica con la distancia
... Furthermore, we evaluated coloration homogenization after urbanization by fitting the decay curves of the color-based similarity to the geographic distance. We used the halving distance (i.e., the distance after which a given similarity value was predicted to decrease by 50 %) as a measure of turnover rate (König et al., 2017). We calculated the pairwise beta dissimilarity between each pair of avian communities using Simpson's dissimilarity index (β sim ). ...
Article
Full-text available
Urbanization has altered natural landscapes and serves as an environmental filter that selects species with specific traits. Coloration is an important trait associated with biotic interactions and thermoregulation, enabling species’ survival and reproductive success. However, few studies have focused on how species coloration changes in response to urbanization. Here, we used 547 passerine bird species from 42 cities and their corresponding nonurban communities in China to test whether urban species are darker and if they have duller plumage colors than their non-urban counterparts. Furthermore, we examined whether and how urbanization influences avian plumage color homogenization and the extent to which urbanization has altered the strength of the color–latitude geographic pattern in passerine birds across China. We found a 3.2% loss in the coloration space of birds after urbanization, although there were no significant differences in the individual dimensions of colorfulness and lightness between urban and non-urban birds. Avian communities in cities exhibited more plumage color homogenization than those in non-urban communities. There were significant latitudinal gradients in plumage colorfulness and lightness in non-urban communities, but these correlations were weaker in urban communities. Non-urban communities that were more colorful and lighter tended to be duller and darker in urban environments, and vice versa. Our results provide national-scale evidence that urbanization has led to reduced color diversity, increased color-based community similarity, and altered geographic patterns of avian plumage color gradients in China. These findings provide new insights into how rapid human-induced environmental changes have affected animal coloration during the Anthropocene.
... Although understanding diversity patterns is a key priority on island research (Patiño et al. 2017), the number of studies focusing on beta diversity patterns in island settings is still limited. Available results support a stronger influence of environmental dissimilarity on beta diversity compared to geographical distances (König et al. 2016, Matthews et al. 2020, Mouton et al. 2023, although other spatial variables such as island age, area, elevation and number of islands in the archipelago might also affect beta diversity patterns (Cabral et al. 2014, Arjona et al. 2018, König et al. 2021, Walentowitz et al. 2022, Mouton et al. 2023. In particular, a recent study in Macaronesia identified precipitation as one of the main drivers of turnover for several groups of land plants (Mouton et al. 2023), which goes in line with other studies conducted in the mainland (Freestone andInouye 2006, Baselga 2010) that indicate an increase in turnover with increasing environmental dissimilarity. ...
... Islands and habitats presenting a different letter are significantly different from each other (p < 0.05). when comparing islands than habitats or areas within them, as already suggested by König et al. (2016). They also coincide with other studies conducted in the mainland (Soininen et al. 2007, Keil et al. 2012, which showed a decline in turnover with increasing grain size and reinforce the idea that ecological patterns may change for the same group of organisms depending on the scale considered (Cacciatori et al. 2020). ...
... Seminatural pastures are abandoned fields often recolonized by endemic species from the remaining patches of native forest , in a process that may have resulted in more complex assemblages than the native communities they came from. Previous findings reported by König et al. (2016), showed that distance decay rate of herbs was lower than for trees or shrubs, unlike this study where these are comparable to native forests (trees) and naturalized vegetation (shrubs). This can be related to the grain selected for the analysis; while König et al. (2016) focused on patterns at a global scale using grains that ranged between 1 and 500 000 km 2 , our analysis has a smaller extent and grain size that may be capturing heterogeneity-related processes that are not very determinant at larger scales (Barton et al. 2013). ...
Article
Full-text available
Beta diversity patterns are essential for understanding how biological communities are structured. Geographical and environmental factors, as well as species dispersal ability, are important drivers of beta diversity, but their relative importance may vary across spatial scales. In this study, we evaluate whether beta diversity changes across geographical scales and analyse how different drivers affect turnover patterns of native seed plants in an oceanic archipelago, the Azores (Portugal). Using a 500 × 500 m resolution grid, we selected cells that are covered by one of the following habitats: native forest, naturalized vegetation and seminatural pastures. We calculated species turnover at three spatial scales: 1) between islands, 2) between cells within each island, and finally 3) between cells of each of the habitats of interest in each island. We then calculated the contribution of dispersal syndromes (endozoochory, epizoochory, hydrochory and anemochory) to turnover at each of the scales. Lastly, we assessed the relationship between geographical and climatic distances and habitat type with turnover. Turnover was higher at the smallest spatial scale, particularly in seminatural pastures, and decreased with increasing spatial scales, a pattern potentially associated with the historical fragmentation and current patchy distribution of native forest and seminatural habitats in the Azores. Dispersal syndromes and habitat type had a negligible effect on turnover at all scales. Geographical distance had a positive effect on turnover at all scales, increasing its importance with scale. The relationship between turnover and climatic distance was only significant at the intermediate and small scales in specific islands and habitats. Therefore, scale plays an important role at determining the effect of the drivers of turnover, in particular geographical and climatic distance. These results highlight the need to carefully select the scale of analysis when studying turnover patterns, as well as identifying the potential drivers associated with each spatial scale.
... Among these phenological events, flowering naturally serves as a significant indicator of the transitions between vegetative and reproductive phases and is important in maintaining ecological balance (Schwartz, 2003). Climate change crucially modifies flowering time, which is a vital adaptation for ensuring successful reproduction in response to shifting environmental conditions (Corteś-Flores et al., 2017;König et al., 2017). There are various types of evidence indicating that phenological traits can be changed rapidly when there is strong natural selection which is influenced by environmental factors (Schwartz, 2003;Elzinga et al., 2007;Chuine, 2010). ...
Article
Full-text available
The phenology has gained considerably more attention in recent times of climate change. The transition from vegetative to reproductive phases is a critical process in the life history of plants, closely tied to phenology. In an era of climate change, understanding how environmental factors affect this transition is of paramount importance. This study consisted of field surveys and a greenhouse experiment on the reproductive biology of Northern pipevine (Aristolochia contorta Bunge). During field surveys, we investigated the environmental factors and growth characteristics of mature A. contorta, with a focus on both its vegetative and reproductive phases. In its successful flowering during the reproductive phase, A. contorta grew under the conditions of 40% relative light intensity and 24% soil moisture content, and had a vertical rhizome. In the greenhouse experiments, we examined the impact of increased CO2 concentration on the growth and development of 10-year-old A. contorta, considering the effect of rhizome direction. Planted with a vertical rhizome direction, A. contorta exhibited sufficient growth for flowering under ambient CO2 concentrations. In contrast, when planted with a horizontal rhizome direction, it was noted to significantly impede successful growth and flowering under elevated CO2 concentrations. This hindered the process of flowering, highlighting the pivotal role of substantial vegetative growth in achieving successful flowering. Furthermore, we observed a higher number of underground buds and shoots under the conditions of elevated CO2 concentration and a horizontal rhizome direction instead of flowering. Elevated CO2 concentrations also exhibited diverse effects on mature A. contorta’s flower traits, resulting in smaller flower size, shorter longevity, and reduced stigma receptivity, and pollen viability. The study shed light on elevated CO2 concentrations can hinder growth, potentially obstructing sexual reproduction and diminishing genetic diversity.
... We calculated and compared the halving distance to quantify the turnover rate of each similarity index between the natural and urban communities. The halving distance represents the distance at which a given similarity value is predicted to decrease by 50% (Soininen et al. 2007;König et al. 2017). In addition, we compared the slopes of natural and urban communities from regressions of compositional similarity and log-transformed geographical distance. ...
... In this analysis, environmental dissimilarity and geographical distance were the predictor variables, and community composition was the response variable. The fit of each GDM was measured using the percentage of explained variance (Ferrier et al. 2007), and the variable importance with respect to compositional similarity was estimated using the total height of the transformation function curve (Fitzpatrick et al. 2013;König et al. 2017). ...
... function (Ferrier et al. 2007). To explore whether variable importance differed between natural and urban communities, the height of each predictor was linearly rescaled to ensure that their sum equaled the proportion of deviance explained by the model (König et al. 2017). The climate data were derived from the WorldClim dataset (version 2.0; 2.5 arc min spatial resolution; Fick & Hijmans 2017). ...
Article
Full-text available
Urbanization-driven biotic homogenization has been recorded in various ecosystems on local and global scales; however, it is largely unexplored in developing countries. Empirical studies on different taxa and bioregions show conflicting results (i.e. biotic homogenization vs. biotic differentiation); the extent to which the community composition changes in response to anthropogenic disturbances and the factors governing this process, therefore, require elucidation. Here, we used a compiled database of 760 bird species in China to quantify the multiple-site β-diversity and fitted distance decay in pairwise β-diversities between natural and urban assemblages to assess whether urbanization had driven biotic homogenization. We used generalized dissimilarity models (GDM) to elucidate the roles of spatial and environmental factors in avian community dissimilarities before and after urbanization. The multiple-site β-diversities among urban assemblages were markedly lower than those among natural assemblages, and the distance decays in pairwise similarities in natural assemblages were more rapid. These results were consistent among taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional aspects, supporting a general biotic homogenization driven by urbanization. The GDM results indicated that geographical distance and temperature were the dominant predictors of avian community dissimilarity. However, the contribution of geographical distance and climatic factors decreased in explaining compositional dissimilarities in urban assemblages. Geographical and environmental distances accounted for much lower variations in compositional dissimilarities in urban than in natural assemblages, implying a potential risk of uncertainty in model predictions under further climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. Our study concludes that taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional dimensions elucidate urbanization-driven biotic homogenization in China.
... Making use of the species composition per region and the floristic status of occurrences, studies using the GIFT database provided global assessments for specific plant groups such as epiphytes , phylogenetic diversity Weigelt et al., 2015) and endemism , and β-diversity (König et al., 2017). Unlike other databases where species composition is available at the plot level (e.g. ...
Article
Full-text available
Advancing knowledge of biodiversity requires global open‐access databases. Having large‐scale information on plant distributions, functional traits and evolutionary history will enable the scientific community to improve its understanding of the patterns and drivers of plant diversity on a global scale. The Global Inventory of Floras and Traits (GIFT) is a global database of regional plant checklists that has proven successful in documenting biogeographical patterns of plants. Since the release of the first version of GIFT, the database kept on expanding. We introduce GIFT version 3.0, which contains 5169 plant checklists referring to 3400 regions worldwide. These checklists include a total of 371,148 land plant species, mostly vascular plants, of which 354,848 have accepted species names, and species‐level data for 109 functional traits. This new version of GIFT relies on new resources for taxonomic name standardization, is matched to a new plant phylogeny, comes with a new trait aggregation workflow and includes additional environmental variables. We also present the GIFT R ‐package, which contains all necessary functions to retrieve distributional, functional, phylogenetic, and environmental data from the GIFT database. The package comes with a dedicated website, https://biogeomacro.github.io/GIFT/ , which includes three vignettes to guide users in retrieving data from GIFT. The recent development of GIFT and its associated R ‐package provide ecologists with access to one of the largest plant databases. This will foster research into regional to global patterns of plant diversity and their underlying mechanisms. The ability to retrieve and cite data from any previous and current instance of the GIFT database will ensure the reproducibility of studies that utilise it.
... Numerous studies have demonstrated that the effects of immigration selection vary depending on taxon-specific biological attributes. These attributes include dispersal capabilities, breeding system flexibility, growth rates, tolerance of nutrient disequilibrium, disease resistance, seed or spore dormancy, and sensitivity to species interactions (Carlquist 1966c, Baker 1955, 1967, Jordan 2001, Page 2002, Burns 2005, Whittaker et al. 2008, König et al. 2017. The lack of gymnosperms and pteridophytes in the examples of island syndrome illustrates how the immigration filtering process influences the likelihood of exhibiting island syndrome. ...
... Beta-diversity may provide information about species' ecological and evolutionary causes of distribution patterns. As such, beta-diversity patterns have been routinely studied in several taxa (König et al., 2017;Soininen et al., 2018;Graco-Roza et al., 2022). In considering species composition alone, betadiversity does not directly address evolutionary processes because taxonomic beta-diversity (TBD) treats all species equally (i.e., as taxonomic entities) and does not provide information about how deep in evolutionary time clades of these species have been separated. ...
... set of potential colonizers (König et al., 2017). PBD patterns in these areas deserve better attention, as the calculation of PBD and TBD in coastal areas tends to include a low number of cells in the moving window. ...
Article
Questions Geographic gradients of beta‐diversity help understanding the relationship between species and their environment. However, on a global scale, such patterns are only known for a few taxa, mainly terrestrial vertebrates, especially when considering the phylogenetic dimension. Here, we present the first global analysis of phylogenetic beta‐diversity (PBD) for angiosperms. We aim to disentangle the relative contribution of PBD components (turnover‐ and nestedness‐resultant differences) and the deviation of PBD given the taxonomic beta‐diversity (TBD) along environmental and geographic gradients. Location Global. Methods We compiled range maps of 207,146 angiosperm species at 1° cells and calculated PBD for assemblages formed by each focal cell and its neighboring cells in radii of 1.5° and 2° (“moving‐window” approach). PBD was decomposed into turnover‐ and nestedness‐resultant components, evaluating their relative importance as the proportion of nestedness‐resultant PBD to the total PBD (PBD ratio ). To evaluate lineage exchanges, we calculated the deviation of PBD from TBD (PBD dev ). We assessed the breakpoints of relationship between PBD and geographic (latitude and elevation) and environmental (temperature and precipitation) gradients using linear piecewise regressions. Results The turnover‐resultant component was predominant in shaping the global angiosperm PBD pattern. PBD ratio was positively correlated with temperature, having a breakpoint around 14°. Because PBD dev was mostly positive, TBD prevailed over PBD; PBDdev was correlated significantly with latitude and temperature gradients, being higher (i.e., low lineage replacement compared with species replacement) at latitudes above 50° N, and in colder climates (below 2°C). Conclusions We provided the first global assessment of current geographic PBD patterns for angiosperms. Our results showed that such patterns are largely dictated by global environmental and geographic gradients, with lineage replacement being more important than lineage loss in virtually all areas, except at higher latitudes and on islands and peninsulas.