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Co-occurrence patterns of Bornean vertebrates suggest competitive exclusion is strongest among distantly related species

  • Community ecology - Original research
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Abstract

Assessing the importance of deterministic processes in structuring ecological communities is a central focus of community ecology. Typically, community ecologists study a single taxonomic group, which precludes detection of potentially important biotic interactions between distantly related species, and inherently assumes competition is strongest between closely related species. We examined distribution patterns of vertebrate species across the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia to assess the extent to which inter-specific competition may have shaped ecological communities on the island and whether the intensity of inter-specific competition in present-day communities varies as a function of evolutionary relatedness. We investigated the relative extent of competition within and between species of primates, birds, bats and squirrels using species presence–absence and attribute data compiled for 21 forested sites across Borneo. We calculated for each species pair the checkerboard unit value (CU), a statistic that is often interpreted as indicating the importance of interspecific competition. The percentage of species pairs with significant CUs was lowest in within-taxon comparisons. Moreover, for invertebrate-eating species the percentage of significantly checkerboarded species pairs was highest in comparisons between primates and other taxa, particularly birds and squirrels. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that competitive interactions between distantly related species may have shaped the distribution of species and thus the composition of Bornean vertebrate communities. This research highlights the importance of taking into account the broad mammalian and avian communities in which species occur for understanding the factors that structure biodiversity.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Nick Beaudrot, Mark Grote, and Alison Marklein for assistance with analyses in R; Carson Young for assistance with bird data entry and diet classification; Dena Clink, Chris Dillis, Melissa Emery Thompson, Sandy Harcourt, Jason Kamilar, Jay Read, Marcel Rejmánek, Carson Young and the University of California Davis Simian Seminar participants for discussion. We also thank Nick Gotelli, Joanna Lambert, Joseph Veech and several anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions of this manuscript. This work was supported in part by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a University of California Davis Graduate Group in Ecology Fellowship to L. B.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Group in Ecology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Lydia Beaudrot & Andrew J. Marshall

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Lydia Beaudrot & Andrew J. Marshall

  3. Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NZ, UK

    Matthew J. Struebig

  4. School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, London, E1 4NS, UK

    Matthew J. Struebig

  5. People and Nature Consulting International, Jakarta, Indonesia

    Erik Meijaard

  6. School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia

    Erik Meijaard

  7. Basilornis Consults, Arnhem, 6826 EP, The Netherlands

    S. van Balen

  8. The Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project, Palangkaraya, Indonesia

    Simon Husson

  9. Animal Behavior Graduate Group, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Andrew J. Marshall

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  1. Lydia Beaudrot
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  2. Matthew J. Struebig
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Correspondence to Lydia Beaudrot.

Additional information

Communicated by Joanna Lambert.

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Appendix S1. References for site and species data (PDF 64 kb)

442_2013_2679_MOESM2_ESM.xlsx

Appendix S2. List of species included in the study. Values indicate whether a species was included (1) or not (0) for analyses of invertebrate- or fruit-eating species at all sites or sites with similar habitat types and for medium bodied species. (XLSX 64 kb)

Appendix S3. R code for species-pair analysis. (R 3 kb)

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Beaudrot, L., Struebig, M.J., Meijaard, E. et al. Co-occurrence patterns of Bornean vertebrates suggest competitive exclusion is strongest among distantly related species. Oecologia 173, 1053–1062 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-013-2679-7

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