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Assessing the scale-specific importance of niches and other spatial processes on beta diversity: a case study from a temperate forest

  • Community Ecology - Methods Paper
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Abstract

Niche processes and other spatial processes, such as dispersal, may simultaneously control beta diversity, yet their relative importance may shift across spatial and temporal scales. Although disentangling the relative importance of these processes has been a continuing methodological challenge, recent developments in multi-scale spatial and temporal modeling can now help ecologists estimate their scale-specific contributions. Here we present a statistical approach to (1) detect the presence of a space–time interaction on community composition and (2) estimate the scale-specific importance of environmental and spatial factors on beta diversity. To illustrate the applicability of this approach, we use a case study from a temperate forest understory where tree seedling abundances were monitored during a 9-year period at 40 permanent plots. We found no significant space–time interaction on tree seedling composition, which means that the spatial abundance patterns did not vary over the study period. However, for a given year the relative importance of niche processes and other spatial processes was found to be scale-specific. Tree seedling abundances were primarily controlled by a broad-scale environmental gradient, but within the confines of this gradient the finer scale patchiness was largely due to other spatial processes. This case study illustrates that these two sets of processes are not mutually exclusive and can affect abundance patterns in a scale-dependent manner. More importantly, the use of our methodology for future empirical studies should help in the merging of niche and neutral perspectives on beta diversity, an obvious next step for community ecology.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank F. He, J. Oksanen, K.L. Gross, J.B. Grace and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on previous versions of the manuscript. This work was made possible by a large number of people involved in data collection from 1998 through 2006. For supervision of field work, we wish to thank K. Benjamin, J. Corriveau, G. Couture, C. Savage, R. Léonard, L. d’Orangeville, M. Lapointe, J. Thibeault, P.-O. Roy, M.-A. Vaillancourt, R. Schmucki, J. Villeneuve and G. Maltais-Landry. Thanks to the staff of Station de biologie des Laurentides (SBL) for support. This research was funded by a NSERC grant to A. Bouchard and by the Département de sciences biologiques of Université de Montréal. During the writing of this manuscript, E. Laliberté was supported by scholarships from the University of Canterbury and the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT).

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  1. Etienne Laliberté

    Present address: School of Forestry, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, 8140, New Zealand

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de recherche en biologie végétale (IRBV), Université de Montréal, 4101 Sherbrooke Est, Montréal, QC, H1X 2B2, Canada

    Etienne Laliberté, Alain Paquette & André Bouchard

  2. Département de sciences biologiques, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3J7, Canada

    Pierre Legendre

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  1. Etienne Laliberté
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Correspondence to Etienne Laliberté.

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Communicated by Katherine Gross.

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Laliberté, E., Paquette, A., Legendre, P. et al. Assessing the scale-specific importance of niches and other spatial processes on beta diversity: a case study from a temperate forest. Oecologia 159, 377–388 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-008-1214-8

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