Identifying the hierarchical spatial levels that show the greatest dissimilarities between communities and how these patterns are generated is essential to provide insights into the monitoring and protection of biodiversity. In this study, we additively partitioned diversity of macroinvertebrates into alpha, beta, and gamma diversity across multiple scales in typical and semi‐arid tropical estuaries. We also determined which components of the total beta diversity, in terms of species replacement or richness difference (presence‐absence data) and abundance difference (relative abundance data), had the greatest relative importance in structuring the composition of benthic macrofauna. In typical and semi‐arid tropical estuaries, a non‐random spatial pattern was observed in additive partitioning of diversity, with higher values of beta diversity obtained at the largest scales analyzed. When considering the presence‐absence data, in general there was no clear trend which components of beta diversity had greater relative importance in typical estuaries. In the semi‐arid tropical estuaries, the richness difference component showed greater relative importance in the rainy season, whereas the species replacement presented greater proportions in the dry season. When considering abundance data, in general the abundance difference component showed greater relative importance in typical and semi‐arid tropical estuaries in the two seasonal periods. Therefore, approaches based on the presence/absence and on the relative abundance of species provided complementary answers about the distribution patterns of benthic macroinvertebrate communities. We demonstrated that environmental filtering and dispersal limitation may affect the patterns of distribution of benthic macrofauna in estuaries located in regions with different climatic conditions.

中文翻译：

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空间尺度驱动热带河口底栖大型无脊椎动物群落的多样性模式

识别显示社区之间最大差异的分层空间水平以及如何产生这些模式对于提供对生物多样性监测和保护的见解至关重要。在这项研究中，我们在典型和半干旱热带河口的多个尺度上将大型无脊椎动物的多样性加成划分为alpha，beta和gamma多样性。我们还确定了总贝塔多样性的哪些组成部分，从物种替代或丰富度差异（存在-缺失数据）和丰度差异（相对丰度数据）而言，在构造底栖大型动物的组成方面具有最大的相对重要性。在典型和半干旱的热带河口中，在多样性的加性划分中观察到了非随机的空间格局，在最大的分析规模下获得更高的β多样性值。在考虑存在数据时，通常没有明显的趋势，即在典型的河口中，β多样性的哪些组成部分具有更大的相对重要性。在半干旱的热带河口，丰富度差异分量在雨季显示出相对较高的重要性，而在干旱季节，物种替代表现出更大的比例。考虑丰度数据时，一般来说，丰度差异分量在两个季节的典型和半干旱热带河口中显示出更大的相对重要性。因此，基于物种存在/不存在和物种相对丰富度的方法为底栖大型无脊椎动物群落的分布方式提供了补充性答案。