Distinguishing the mechanisms driving multi-scale community spatial structure in a temperate forest

• Published in: Forest ecology and management 2022-10, Vol.522, p.120462, Article 120462
• Main Authors: Hu, Bing, Zhang, Yuxin, Yakimov, Basil, Zhao, Xiuhai, Zhang, Chunyu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Diversity-area relationship (DAR); Multifractal analysis; Spatial point process; Species-abundance distribution; Species-area relationship
• ISSN: 0378-1127; 1872-7042
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2022.120462

•Diversity area relationships and multifractal analysis describe the forest community structure.•Our results revealed that cluster intensity of species was negatively related to species abundance.•The mechanisms under community spatial structure strongly rely on the diversity measure’s sensitivity to species frequencies. The mechanisms driving the community spatial structure are central questions of community ecology. Previous studies of niche and neutral models have mainly focused on species richness area relationships or species abundance distributions separately, and at several discrete scales. However, considering only the number of species while ignoring information regarding species abundance, or considering changes in the relative abundance of species at only a small number of scales, is not sufficient to fully understand how diversity varies with scale, let alone to explore the mechanisms of diversity change. Multifractal analysis not only provides information regarding the relative abundances of each species and the diversity in groups of species with particular abundance but also offers a unique insight into investigating the community spatial structure. In the study, niche, neutral and combined processes were integrated into spatial point pattern models at multiple spatial scales. We assess the relative contribution of niche and neutral processes in shaping the community spatial structure. Our results show that the mechanism shaping community spatial structure strongly depends on the sensitivity of diversity measure to species frequencies (moment order q): for q