Graduate Group in Ecology, University of California, Davis, USA.
Am J Primatol. 2013 Feb;75(2):170-85. doi: 10.1002/ajp.22095. Epub 2012 Nov 26.
For several decades, primatologists have been interested in understanding how sympatric primate species are able to coexist. Most of our understanding of primate community ecology derives from the assumption that these animals interact predominantly with other primates. In this study, we investigate to what extent multiple community assembly hypotheses consistent with this assumption are supported when tested with communities of primates in isolation versus with communities of primates, birds, bats, and squirrels together. We focus on vertebrate communities on the island of Borneo, where we examine the determinants of presence or absence of species, and how these communities are structured. We test for checkerboard distributions, guild proportionality, and Fox's assembly rule for favored states, and predict that statistical signals reflecting interactions between ecologically similar species will be stronger when nonprimate taxa are included in analyses. We found strong support for checkerboard distributions in several communities, particularly when taxonomic groups were combined, and after controlling for habitat effects. We found evidence of guild proportionality in some communities, but did not find significant support for Fox's assembly rule in any of the communities examined. These results demonstrate the presence of vertebrate community structure that is ecologically determined rather than randomly generated, which is a finding consistent with the interpretation that interactions within and between these taxonomic groups may have shaped species composition in these communities. This research highlights the importance of considering the broader vertebrate communities with which primates co-occur, and so we urge primatologists to explicitly consider nonprimate taxa in the study of primate ecology.
几十年来，灵长类动物学家一直致力于了解同域分布的灵长类物种如何能够共存。我们对灵长类动物群落生态学的大部分理解都源于这样一种假设，即这些动物主要与其他灵长类动物相互作用。在这项研究中，我们调查了在与隔离的灵长类动物群落和与灵长类动物、鸟类、蝙蝠和松鼠一起的群落进行测试时，与这一假设一致的多个群落组装假说在多大程度上得到支持。我们专注于婆罗洲岛上的脊椎动物群落，在那里我们研究了物种存在或不存在的决定因素，以及这些群落是如何构建的。我们测试了棋盘分布、 guild 比例和 Fox 的有利状态组装规则，并预测当非灵长类分类群被纳入分析时，反映生态相似物种之间相互作用的统计信号将更强。我们在几个群落中发现了强烈支持棋盘分布的证据，尤其是在将分类群组合在一起并控制了栖息地效应之后。我们在一些群落中发现了 guild 比例的证据，但在我们检查的任何群落中都没有发现 Fox 组装规则的显著支持。这些结果表明存在由生态决定而不是随机产生的脊椎动物群落结构，这一发现与以下解释一致，即这些分类群内部和之间的相互作用可能塑造了这些群落中的物种组成。这项研究强调了考虑与灵长类动物共存的更广泛的脊椎动物群落的重要性，因此我们敦促灵长类动物学家在研究灵长类动物生态学时明确考虑非灵长类动物分类群。
