Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Conservação e Manejo da Vida Silvestre, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Universidade de São Paulo, Escola Superior de Agricultura "Luiz de Queiroz", Laboratório de Ecologia, Manejo e Conservação de Fauna Silvestre (LEMaC), Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 Mar 15;708:135171. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135171. Epub 2019 Nov 23.
The conservation of biodiversity requires adequate information about species and ecosystem attributes. The local contribution to β-diversity (LCBD) is a community composition-based metric of ecological uniqueness of sites. Here, we tested the capability of taxonomic and functional attributes of biological communities to explain variation in LCBD at a large spatial extent. We approached this idea using data on dung beetles and mammals (medium-to-large, small and volant) recorded across the Atlantic Forest of South America due to their millennial-scale evolutionary relationship (food providers and consumers). We related LCBD values to both taxonomic and functional metrics via beta regression. Our results revealed that taxonomic and functional features of assemblages can be used to predict variation in ecological uniqueness (LCBD). High LCBD values were associated with low species and functional richness for all animal groups. For dung beetles, high LCBD values were associated with low values of all functional metrics. For mammalian groups high ecological uniqueness was associated with low abundance, low Rao's quadratic entropy, as well as high functional divergence, functional evenness, functional originality, and either low or high functional specialization. This implies that variation in ecological uniqueness can be explained by functional features at large spatial extents, although the type of functional metrics' response of assemblages may be animal group specific. The potential of the LCBD metric to inform about both taxonomic and functional changes at large scales makes its use in conservation planning a highly promising approach.
生物多样性的保护需要有关物种和生态系统属性的充分信息。局部β多样性（LCBD）是一种基于群落组成的站点生态独特性的度量指标。在这里，我们测试了生物群落的分类和功能属性在大空间尺度上解释 LCBD 变化的能力。我们使用了南美的大西洋森林中记录的粪便甲虫和哺乳动物（中大型、小型和飞行）的数据来研究这个问题，因为它们具有千年尺度的进化关系（食物提供者和消费者）。我们通过β回归将 LCBD 值与分类和功能指标相关联。我们的结果表明，群落的分类和功能特征可用于预测生态独特性（LCBD）的变化。对于所有动物群，高 LCBD 值与低物种和功能丰富度相关。对于粪甲虫，LCBD 值高与所有功能指标的值低相关。对于哺乳动物群体，高生态独特性与低丰度、低 Rao 二次熵以及高功能发散、功能均匀度、功能原创性以及功能专业化水平低或高相关。这意味着在大空间尺度上，生态独特性的变化可以用功能特征来解释，尽管群落的功能指标响应类型可能是特定于动物群的。LCBD 指标在大尺度上既能提供分类变化又能提供功能变化的潜力，使其在保护规划中的应用成为一种很有前途的方法。
