Context

Understanding the relative contributions of spatial and environmental processes on community assembly is a central question in ecology. Despite this long-standing interest, our understanding of how landscape structure may drive spatial processes of community assembly remains poorly understood in part because of the challenge of tracking community assembly across landscapes and quantifying key aspects of landscapes that may impact assembly processes.

Objectives

We examined the roles of spatial and environmental processes on structuring assemblies of ants in 72 cleared patches embedded within a forested landscape.

Methods

To examine the role of spatial processes, we contrasted the use of geographic distances between patches and effective distances estimated from connectivity modeling accounting for matrix vegetation structure hypothesized to be important for ant community assembly. To examine the role of environmental processes, we quantified patch age and abundance of a key competitor and invasive species, the fire ant Solenopsis invicta.

Results

We found evidence for the importance of both spatial and environmental processes in structuring ant communities. When spatial processes were quantified as geographic distance, environmental variables were the predominant factors accounting for variation in ant community dissimilarity among patches. However, accounting for matrix resistance with circuit-theoretic connectivity modeling resulted in higher accounting of variation in ant community dissimilarity than geographic distance and changed the predominant variables accounting for that variation from environmental to spatial processes.

Conclusions

These findings show that accounting for connectivity through the matrix can be decisive in determining the primary drivers of community assembly.

中文翻译：

---

对连通性的考虑改变了空间和环境过程在元社区组装中的明显作用

语境

了解空间和环境过程对社区集会的相对贡献是生态学的中心问题。尽管有这种长期的兴趣，但我们对景观结构如何驱动社区集会的空间过程的理解仍然知之甚少，部分原因是要跟踪跨景观的社区集会并量化可能影响组装过程的关键景观方面的挑战。

目标

我们检查了空间和环境过程在构建嵌入森林景观中的72个清除斑块中的蚂蚁结构化装配体中的作用。

方法

为了检查空间过程的作用，我们对比了斑块之间的地理距离和根据连通性模型估算的有效距离的使用，该距离被认为对蚂蚁群落的组装很重要。为了检查环境过程的作用，我们量化了主要竞争者和入侵物种火蚁Solenopsis invicta的斑块年龄和丰度。

结果

我们发现证据表明空间和环境过程在构建蚂蚁群落中的重要性。当将空间过程量化为地理距离时，环境变量是解释斑块之间蚂蚁群落差异的主要因素。但是，用电路理论连通性模型考虑矩阵电阻会导致比地理距离更能说明蚂蚁群落相异性的变化，并改变了主要变量，说明了从环境到空间过程的这种变化。

结论

这些发现表明，考虑通过矩阵的连通性对于确定社区集会的主要驱动力可能是决定性的。