Journal d'écosystème et d'écographie

Abstrait

A Multiscale Variation Partitioning Procedure for Assessing the Influence of Dispersal Limitation on Species Rarity and Distribution Aggregation in the 50-Ha Tree Plots of Barro Colorado Island, Panama

Youhua Chen

Spatial autocorrelation is one of the most important ecological processes discussed in current ecological literature. The present study represents an attempt to quantify the effect of dispersal limitation on community structure under a local environmental condition using a multiscale approach. Moreover, I assess the relationships between explained variation accounted for by space, rarity, and the distributional aggregation of species in the community. My results showed that spatial autocorrelation would have increasing influences on community composition when the spatial resolutions were increased for the 50-ha tree plots of Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama Canal. Also, when spatial resolutions were increasing, the rarity of species tended to decrease as measured as an intrinsic characteristic of the species regarding its distribution (monotonically), while the aggregation of species tended to increase (not monotonically). Overall, it might be of some values to perform such multiscale analyses for analyzing the relative contribution of space and environment on shaping community structure and species distribution dynamically.