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A theory for species co-occurrence in interaction networks

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Abstract

The study of species co-occurrences has been central in community ecology since the foundation of the discipline. Co-occurrence data are, nevertheless, a neglected source of information to model species distributions and biogeographers are still debating about the impact of biotic interactions on species distributions across geographical scales. We argue that a theory of species co-occurrence in ecological networks is needed to better inform interpretation of co-occurrence data, to formulate hypotheses for different community assembly mechanisms, and to extend the analysis of species distributions currently focused on the relationship between occurrences and abiotic factors. The main objective of this paper is to provide the first building blocks of a general theory for species co-occurrences. We formalize the problem with definitions of the different probabilities that are studied in the context of co-occurrence analyses. We analyze three species interactions modules and conduct multi-species simulations in order to document five principles influencing the associations between species within an ecological network: (i) direct interactions impact pairwise co-occurrence, (ii) indirect interactions impact pairwise co-occurrence, (iii) pairwise co-occurrence rarely are symmetric, (iv) the strength of an association decreases with the length of the shortest path between two species, and (v) the strength of an association decreases with the number of interactions a species is experiencing. Our analyses reveal the difficulty of the interpretation of species interactions from co-occurrence data. We discuss whether the inference of the structure of interaction networks is feasible from co-occurrence data. We also argue that species distributions models could benefit from incorporating conditional probabilities of interactions within the models as an attempt to take into account the contribution of biotic interactions to shaping individual distributions of species.

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Acknowledgments

This work was inspired by discussions with T. Poisot, D. Stouffer, A. Cyrtwill, and A. Rozenfield. Thanks to Matt Talluto and Isabelle Boulangeat for helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. We are also thankful to Lia Hemerik for providing advice that greatly improved the manuscript. Financial support was provided by the Canada Research Chair program and a NSERC-Discovery grant to D. Gravel. M. Araújo acknowledges support from Imperial Colege’s Grand Challenges in Ecosystems and Environment Initiative.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution, CNRS UMR 5554, Université de Montpellier, Place Eugène Bataillon, CC 065, 32095, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Kévin Cazelles & Nicolas Mouquet

  2. Département de Biologie, Chimie et Géographie, Université du Québec à Rimouski, 300 Allée des Ursulines, Québec, G5L 3A1, Canada

    Kévin Cazelles & Dominique Gravel

  3. Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY, Berks, UK

    Miguel B. Araújo

  4. Department of Biogeography Global Change, National Museum of Natural Sciences, CSIC, Calle José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2, ES-28006, Madrid, Spain

    Miguel B. Araújo

  5. Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, Copenhagen, 2100, Denmark

    Miguel B. Araújo

Authors
  1. Kévin Cazelles
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  2. Miguel B. Araújo
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  3. Nicolas Mouquet
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  4. Dominique Gravel
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Correspondence to Kévin Cazelles.

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Kévin Cazelles and Dominique Gravel contributed equally to this work.

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Cazelles, K., Araújo, M.B., Mouquet, N. et al. A theory for species co-occurrence in interaction networks. Theor Ecol 9, 39–48 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12080-015-0281-9

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