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Dryad

Data from: Species that dominate spatial turnover can be of (almost) any abundance

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Jan 30, 2025 version files 2.23 MB

Abstract

An ongoing quest in ecology is understanding how species commonness influences compositional change. While each species’ contribution to beta diversity (SCBD) depends both on its abundance and how widespread it is (e.g., occupancy) a general expectation for these influences is lacking. Using published data for 9924 species across 177 metacommunities, we modeled relative SCBD as a function of abundance and occupancy using both correlative and mechanistic regression models (the latter derived from population demographic theory). Although the correlative model provided a superior fit to the data, both results suggest it is infrequent (high abundance and mid-high occupancy) species that make the dominant contribution to beta diversity. The nature of their interaction is most apparent when depicted in abundance-occupancy sample space, which shows the probability of making a dominant contribution to beta diversity is a concave-up function of abundance. Species found in an intermediate number of sites (0.56) required the smallest share of total abundance (0.05) to make a top-decile contribution. The abundance-occupancy sample space illustrates how empirical abundance-SCBD relationships can be linear or unimodal and provides a general framework to understand global change processes. To preserve compositional turnover, species of infrequent abundance and occupancy should be prioritized.