The last two decades have witnessed unprecedented changes in beta diversity, the spatial variation in species composition, from local to global scales. However, analytical challenges have hampered empirical ecologists from quantifying the extinction and colonisation processes behind these changing beta diversity patterns. Here, we develop a novel numerical method to additively partition the temporal changes in beta diversity into components that reflect local extinctions and colonisations. By applying this method to empirical datasets, we revealed spatiotemporal community dynamics that were otherwise undetectable. In mature forests, we found that local extinctions resulted in tree communities becoming more spatially heterogeneous, while colonisations simultaneously caused them to homogenise. In coral communities, we detected non‐random community disassembly and reassembly following an environmental perturbation, with a temporally varying balance between extinctions and colonisations. Partitioning the dynamic processes that underlie beta diversity can provide more mechanistic insights into the spatiotemporal organisation of biodiversity.

中文翻译：

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空间变化的时间变化：划分β多样性的灭绝和定居部分

在过去的二十年中，β多样性发生了前所未有的变化，从局部到全球范围内，物种组成的空间变化。但是，分析挑战阻碍了经验丰富的生态学家对这些不断变化的β多样性模式背后的灭绝和定殖过程进行量化。在这里，我们开发了一种新颖的数值方法，可将β多样性的时间变化加成划分为反映局部灭绝和定居的成分。通过将这种方法应用于经验数据集，我们揭示了时空社区动态，否则无法检测到。在成熟的森林中，我们发现局部的灭绝导致树木群落在空间上变得更加异质，而定居同时使它们同质化。在珊瑚群落中 我们在环境扰动后检测到非随机的社区拆解和重新组装，在灭绝和殖民化之间存在时间上的平衡变化。对构成beta多样性基础的动态过程进行分区可以为生物多样性的时空组织提供更多的机械见解。