Understanding the interplay between processes operating at large and small spatiotemporal scales in shaping biotic interactions remains challenging. Recent studies illustrate how phenotypic specialization, species life‐history traits and/or resource partitioning recurrently underlie the structure of mutualistic interactions in terrestrial ecosystems along large latitudinal gradients of biodiversity. However, we know considerably less about how local processes interact with large‐scale patterns of biodiversity in modulating biotic interactions in the marine realm. Considering agonistic behaviour as a proxy for contest competition, we empirically investigate whether the structure of reef fish agonistic interactions is conserved across a 34 000‐km longitudinal gradient of biodiversity. By sampling coral reefs using standardized remote underwater video, we found recurrent patterns of fish agonistic behaviour in disparate communities distributed across five biogeographic provinces of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. While the sheer number of species increases with regional richness, the number of aggressive disputes at the habitat scale is similar across communities. We then combined generalized linear models and network theory to reveal that, the emergent structure of local agonistic networks is not modular but instead recurrently display a nested structure, with a core of highly interactive site‐attached herbivores of the Pomacentridae family. Therefore, despite the increase in the number of species involved in agonistic interactions toward speciose communities, the network structure is conserved along the longitudinal richness gradient because local disputes are mostly driven by closely‐related, functionally‐similar species. These findings suggest that evolutionary and local processes interact in modulating reef fish agonistic behaviour and that fine‐scale niche‐partitioning can structure the ecological networks in marine ecosystems.

中文翻译：

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珊瑚礁鱼类激动行为的宏观生态学

了解在塑造生物相互作用过程中时空规模大小过程之间的相互作用仍然具有挑战性。最近的研究表明，表型专门化，物种生活史特征和/或资源分配是如何反复地沿生物多样性的大纬度梯度在陆地生态系统中相互影响的结构的。但是，我们对本地过程如何与大规模生物多样性模式相互作用以调节海洋领域中生物相互作用的了解却很少。考虑到激动行为可以作为竞赛比赛的代理，我们根据经验研究了在34000公里的生物多样性纵向梯度上礁鱼激动交互的结构是否得到保留。通过使用标准化的远程水下视频对珊瑚礁进行采样，我们发现分布在太平洋和大西洋五个生物地理省份的不同社区中的鱼类激动行为的复发模式。尽管物种的绝对数量随着区域的丰富而增加，但在整个社区中，生境规模上的侵略性争议数量却相似。然后，我们将广义线性模型与网络理论相结合，揭示出，局部激动网络的新兴结构不是模块化的，而是周期性地显示嵌套结构，其核心是高互动性附生食草动物科的核心。因此，尽管参与针对特定群落的激动性相互作用的物种数量有所增加，网络结构沿纵向丰富度梯度得以保留，因为局部争端主要是由功能紧密相似的物种驱动的。这些发现表明，进化过程和局部过程在调节礁鱼的激动行为中相互作用，并且精细的生态位划分可以构建海洋生态系统中的生态网络。