Stochastic and deterministic drivers of spatial and temporal turnover in breeding bird communities

By James C. Stegen, Amy L. Freestone, T. O. Crist, Marti J. Anderson, Jonathan M. Chase, L. Comita, H. Cornell, K. Davies, S. Harrison, H. Hurlbert and 6 more. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2012

155 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Aim A long-standing challenge in ecology is to identify the suite of factors that lead to turnover in species composition in both space and time.These factors might be stochastic (e.g. sampling and priority effects) or deterministic (e.g. competition and environmental filtering).While numerous studies have examined the relationship between turnover and individual drivers of interest (e.g.primary productivity, habitat heterogeneity,or regional ‐‘gamma’‐ diversity),few studies have disentangled the simultaneous influences of multiple stochastic and deterministic processes on both temporal and spatial turnover. If turnover is governed primarily by stochastic sampling processes, removing the sampling effects of gamma diversity should result in non-significant relationships between turnover and environmental variables.Conversely,if deterministicprocessesgovernturnoverpatterns,removing sampling effects will have little influence on turnover gradients. Here, we test these predictions. Location The United States. Methods Continental-scale,multidecadal data were used to quantify spatial and temporal turnover in avian community composition within 295 survey routes. A series of regression and structural equation models were coupled with a null model to construct statistical models describing turnover patterns. Results Examining explanatory variables alone or in combination showed that spatial and temporal turnover increased together, decreased with primary productivity and increased with habitat heterogeneity.The relationships between turnover and all variables became weaker when sampling effects were removed,but relationships with primary productivity and habitat heterogeneity remained relatively strong. In addition, spatial turnover increased strongly with spatial gamma diversity after sampling effects were removed.

Subfields: Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0d598f16b419c8342ad54a7ac17409c21ca8d0d3

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In Ecology

1. Zhiyun Ouyang
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3. Shengbin Chen
4. L. Mao

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. L. Mao
2. Zhiyun Ouyang
3. Shengbin Chen
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Citations in the corpus

• Drivers of β‐diversity along latitudinal gradients revisited (2013, methodology): “This null model approach has been applied in several studies (e.g. Stegen et al., 2012).”