School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 217, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6AH, UK.
CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallés, Spain.
Glob Chang Biol. 2023 Jun;29(12):3271-3284. doi: 10.1111/gcb.16684. Epub 2023 Mar 23.
At large scales, the mechanisms underpinning stability in natural communities may vary in importance due to changes in species composition, mean abundance, and species richness. Here we link species characteristics (niche positions) and community characteristics (richness and abundance) to evaluate the importance of stability mechanisms in 156 butterfly communities monitored across three European countries and spanning five bioclimatic regions. We construct niche-based hierarchical structural Bayesian models to explain first differences in abundance, population stability, and species richness between the countries, and then explore how these factors impact community stability both directly and indirectly (via synchrony and population stability). Species richness was partially explained by the position of a site relative to the niches of the species pool, and species near the centre of their niche had higher average population stability. The differences in mean abundance, population stability, and species richness then influenced how much variation in community stability they explained across the countries. We found, using variance partitioning, that community stability in Finnish communities was most influenced by community abundance, whereas this aspect was unimportant in Spain with species synchrony explaining most variation; the UK was somewhat intermediate with both factors explaining variation. Across all countries, the diversity-stability relationship was indirect with species richness reducing synchrony which increased community stability, with no direct effects of species richness. Our results suggest that in natural communities, biogeographical variation observed in key drivers of stability, such as population abundance and species richness, leads to community stability being limited by different factors and that this can partially be explained due to the niche characteristics of the European butterfly assemblage.
在大尺度上，由于物种组成、平均丰度和物种丰富度的变化，支撑自然群落稳定性的机制的重要性可能会有所不同。在这里，我们将物种特征（生态位位置）和群落特征（丰富度和丰度）联系起来，以评估稳定性机制在 156 个蝴蝶群落中的重要性，这些群落分布在三个欧洲国家，跨越五个生物气候区。我们构建了基于生态位的层次结构贝叶斯模型，以解释国家之间丰度、种群稳定性和物种丰富度的第一差异，然后探讨这些因素如何直接和间接（通过同步性和种群稳定性）影响群落稳定性。物种丰富度部分由一个地点相对于物种库的生态位位置来解释，而位于生态位中心附近的物种具有更高的平均种群稳定性。然后，丰度、种群稳定性和物种丰富度的差异影响了它们在各国之间解释群落稳定性的程度。我们通过方差分解发现，芬兰群落的群落稳定性受群落丰度的影响最大，而西班牙的群落稳定性则不受这一因素的影响，物种同步性解释了大部分的变异；英国的情况有些介于两者之间，两个因素都解释了变异。在所有国家中，多样性-稳定性关系是间接的，物种丰富度降低了同步性，从而提高了群落稳定性，而物种丰富度没有直接影响。我们的结果表明，在自然群落中，稳定性的关键驱动因素（如种群丰度和物种丰富度）的生物地理变异导致群落稳定性受到不同因素的限制，而这部分可以通过欧洲蝴蝶组合的生态位特征来解释。
