Skip to main content
Dryad

Data and code from: Bat community assembly in the ecotone of two neotropical biodiversity hotspots is determined by environmental filtering rather than historical factors

Silva, Daiana1; Oliveira, Hernani2; Domingos, Fabricius2

Published Jul 31, 2026 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mgqnk99d2

Data files

Jul 31, 2026 version files 73.20 KB

Click names to download individual files

Abstract

This dataset accompanies a study examining the ecological and evolutionary processes structuring bat communities across the Cerrado–Atlantic Forest ecotone in Brazil, a region characterized by strong environmental gradients and the transition between two of the world's major biodiversity hotspots. Using a coevolutionary modeling framework, we evaluated the relative support for three classic community assembly mechanisms environmental filtering, competitive exclusion, and neutral dynamics and assessed how environmental and historical factors shape patterns of phylogenetic beta diversity across the landscape. We further investigated whether community composition changes abruptly along the gradient extending from the ecotone toward the core regions of each biome. Our analyses reveal that environmental filtering provides the strongest explanation for bat community assembly in the ecotone, outperforming both competitive and neutral models. Variation in phylogenetic beta diversity was primarily associated with precipitation seasonality, annual precipitation, annual temperature range, and canopy height. We also found an abrupt shift in phylogenetic beta diversity between the ecotone and the central Cerrado, but no comparable discontinuity toward the Atlantic Forest, indicating contrasting assembly processes along these two major Neotropical biomes. Together, these results highlight the importance of coevolutionary dynamics in explaining community structure and offer new insights into how environmental and historical drivers shape biodiversity across ecotonal regions.