One of the challenges in modern ecology is reconciling how biotic interactions and abiotic factors are interwoven drivers of community assembly. β-diversity is a measure of the variation in species composition across space and time. The drivers of variability in β-diversity are thus responsible for dictating the trajectory of assembling communities. With data from multiscale surveys conducted in three marine intertidal sandflats, we aimed to determine the relative importance and interdependencies of biotic engineering, environment and spatial distances for β-diversity. In each sandflat, macrofauna and environmental properties were assessed in 400 samples collected at different spatial distances over 300 000 m². The role of environmental variability in driving patterns in β-diversity and species turnover was dependent on the abundances of ecosystem engineers and spatial connectivity among seascapes as shown by the variance explained by the interaction terms in the variance partitioning. Our results highlight the interdependence between space, environment and species interactions in driving community assembly. Given that most models aiming to explain β-diversity variation only consider abiotic factors, our findings call for the incorporation of biotic interactions into these models and we argue that this is essential for understanding resilience to environmental change. The degree of interdependence between environment, space and biotic interactions in driving ecological assembly is pivotal to our understanding of how biodiversity will respond to predicted changes in habitats, environment and key species distributions.

中文翻译：

---

环境、空间和生态工程对海底贝塔多样性的耦合效应

现代生态学面临的挑战之一是协调生物相互作用和非生物因素如何成为社区组装的交织驱动因素。β-多样性是物种组成跨空间和时间变化的度量。因此，β-多样性变异性的驱动因素决定了社区聚集的轨迹。利用在三个海洋潮间带沙滩进行的多尺度调查的数据，我们旨在确定生物工程、环境和空间距离对 β 多样性的相对重要性和相互依赖性。在每个沙滩，大型动物群和环境特性在 300 000 m ²不同空间距离收集的 400 个样本中进行了评估. 环境变异在 β 多样性和物种周转的驱动模式中的作用取决于生态系统工程师的丰度和海景之间的空间连通性，如方差划分中的相互作用项所解释的方差所示。我们的结果强调了空间、环境和物种相互作用在推动群落组装方面的相互依赖性。鉴于大多数旨在解释 β 多样性变化的模型只考虑非生物因素，我们的研究结果要求将生物相互作用纳入这些模型，我们认为这对于理解对环境变化的适应力至关重要。环境之间的相互依赖程度，