A carregar...
Publicação
Spacial Scaling patterns of functional diversity
| Nome: | Descrição: | Tamanho: | Formato: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.09 MB | Adobe PDF |
Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
Ecology, biogeography and conservation biology, among other disciplines, often rely
on species identity, distribution and abundance to perceive and explain patterns in
space and time. Yet, species are not independent units in the way they interact
with their environment. Species often perform similar roles in networks and their
ecosystems, and at least partial redundancy or difference of roles might explain coexistence,
competitive exclusion or other patterns reflected at the community level.
Therefore, considering species traits, that is, the organisms’ functional properties that
interact with the environment, might be of utmost importance in the study of species
relative abundances. Several descriptive measures of diversity, such as the speciesarea
relationship (SAR) and the species abundance distribution (SAD), have been used
extensively to characterize the communities and as a possible window to gain insight
into underlying processes shaping and maintaining biodiversity. However, if the role
of species in a community is better assessed by their functional attributes, then one
should also study the SAR and the SAD by using trait-based approaches, and not only
taxonomic species. Here we merged species according to their similarity in a number
of traits, creating functional units, and used these new units to study the equivalent
patterns of the SAR and of the SAD (functional units abundance distributions - FUADs),
with emphasis on their spatial scaling characteristics. This idea was tested using data on
arthropods collected in Terceira island, in the Azorean archipelago. Our results showed
that diversity scales differently depending on whether we use species or functional units.
If what determines species communities’ dynamics is their functional diversity, then
our results suggest that we may need to revaluate the commonly assumed patterns
of species diversity and, concomitantly, the role of the underlying processes
Descrição
Original Research
Palavras-chave
functional diversity moments functional species abundance distribution functional species-area relationship traits combination
Contexto Educativo
Citação
Alirezazadeh S, Borges PAV, Cardoso P, Gabriel R, Rigal F and Borda-de-Água L (2021) Spatial Scaling Patterns of Functional Diversity. Front. Ecol. Evol. 9:607177
Editora
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution