Programa de Pós-graduação em Entomologia, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil.
Pós-graduação em Ecologia, Conservação e Biodiversidade, LHINRA/Laboratório de História Natural e Reprodutiva de Artrópodes, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, MG, Brazil.
Oecologia. 2024 Dec;206(3-4):265-274. doi: 10.1007/s00442-024-05625-9. Epub 2024 Oct 29.
Understanding the mechanisms that enable species coexistence is a central question in ecology, as it helps to comprehend species diversity. One of the most common stabilizing mechanisms of coexistence is niche segregation, which can prevent the competitive exclusion of the fittest competitor. Niche segregation can manifest itself at various temporal and spatial scales, allowing provide essential insights into understanding the stabilizing mechanisms facilitating the coexistence of species. We assessed coexistence patterns among flower-dwelling spiders in two ways, in the first set of analyses, we investigated the factors influencing the quantity of spider individuals and species. The second approach we investigate the spatio-temporal segregation between species, effectively examining the coexistence patterns. We observed that the presence of inflorescences per plant, the number of flowers per inflorescence, and the presence of EFNs play a significant role in increasing spider abundance and richness. We find only a marginal seasonal effect, suggesting that spiders have constant access to resources throughout the year. Our niche overlap analysis demonstrated synchrony in the spatial occupation of niches by different spider species. The coexistence patterns appeared to be unaffected by the number of inflorescences. The greater number of inflorescences will enable a greater availability of niches, and consequently more abundance and richness of species of spiders the plant can sustain. Our results suggest that, to mitigate the adverse consequences of competitive interactions, spiders tend to adopt spatial partitioning as a strategy to facilitate the coexistence of spiders living in reproductive structures on plants in the Brazilian savanna.
理解物种共存的机制是生态学中的一个核心问题，因为它有助于理解物种多样性。共存的最常见稳定机制之一是生态位隔离，它可以防止最适竞争者的竞争排除。生态位隔离可以在不同的时间和空间尺度上表现出来，为理解促进物种共存的稳定机制提供了重要的见解。我们通过两种方式评估了花居蜘蛛之间的共存模式，在第一组分析中，我们调查了影响蜘蛛个体和物种数量的因素。我们采用的第二种方法是研究物种之间的时空隔离，实际上是检查共存模式。我们观察到，每株植物的花序数量、每个花序的花朵数量和 EFN 的存在对增加蜘蛛丰度和丰富度起着重要作用。我们发现只有微弱的季节性影响，这表明蜘蛛全年都能持续获得资源。我们的生态位重叠分析表明，不同蜘蛛物种在空间上占据生态位的同步性。共存模式似乎不受花序数量的影响。更多的花序将使更多的生态位变得可用，从而使植物上的蜘蛛物种更加丰富。我们的结果表明，为了减轻竞争相互作用的不利后果，蜘蛛倾向于采用空间分区作为一种策略，以促进生活在巴西热带稀树草原植物生殖结构中的蜘蛛的共存。
