Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas, Universidade Estadual Paulista, São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, Brazil.
Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.
PeerJ. 2024 Mar 26;12:e16712. doi: 10.7717/peerj.16712. eCollection 2024.
Biotic and abiotic factors play a crucial role in determining the distribution of species. These factors dictate the conditions that must be met for a species to thrive in a particular area. Sister species that present some degree of niche overlap can shed light on how they are distributed and coexist in their environment. This study aims to investigate the geographical distribution and ecological niche of the sister species of snake-necked turtles and . By analyzing their niche overlap, we aim to obtain a better understanding of how these two species coexist and which variables are determining their occurences. We applied species distribution modeling and compared the niches using the niche equivalence and similarity tests. Our findings show that the distribution of is most influenced by temperature seasonality and isothermality, while is most affected by the temperature seasonality, precipitation of warmest quarter and mean diurnal range. In addition, our results suggest that the niche expressed by retained ecological characteristics that can accurately predict the distribution, but the inverse is not true. In this sense, differences are not solely due to the geographic availability of environmental conditions but can reflect niche restrictions, such as competition.
生物和非生物因素在决定物种分布方面起着至关重要的作用。这些因素决定了一个物种在特定地区茁壮成长所需的条件。具有一定生态位重叠的姐妹物种可以揭示它们在环境中的分布和共存方式。本研究旨在调查蛇颈龟和 的姐妹种的地理分布和生态位。通过分析它们的生态位重叠，我们旨在更好地了解这两个物种如何共存以及哪些变量决定了它们的出现。我们应用物种分布模型并使用生态位等价性和相似性测试来比较生态位。我们的研究结果表明， 的分布受温度季节性和等温性的影响最大，而 受温度季节性、最暖季度降水量和日平均幅度的影响最大。此外，我们的结果表明， 所表达的生态位具有准确预测 的分布的生态特征，但反之则不然。在这种意义上，差异不仅仅是由于环境条件的地理可用性造成的，还可以反映出生态位限制，例如竞争。
