Data from: Interactions between plants and primates shape community diversity in a rainforest in Madagascar

1. Models of ecological community assembly predict how communities of
interacting organisms may be shaped by abiotic and biotic factors.
Competition and environmental filtering are the predominant factors
hypothesized to explain community assembly. 2. This study tested the
effects of habitat, phylogenetic and phenotypic trait predictors on
species co-occurrence patterns and abundances, with the endemic primates
of Madagascar as an empirical system. 3. The abundance of 11 primate
species was estimated along gradients of elevation, food resource
abundance, and anthropogenic habitat disturbance at local scales in
southeast Madagascar. Community composition was compared to null models to
test for phylogenetic and functional structure, and the effects of
phylogenetic relatedness of co-occurring species, their trait similarity,
and environmental variables on species' abundances were tested using
mixed models and quantile regressions. 4. Resource abundance was the
strongest predictor of community structure. Where food tree abundance was
high, closely related species with similar traits dominated communities.
High elevation communities with lower food tree abundance consisted of
species that were distantly related and had divergent traits. Closely
related species had dissimilar abundances where they co-occurred,
partially driven by trait dissimilarity, indicating character
displacement. 5. By integrating local-scale variation in primate community
composition, evolutionary relatedness and functional diversity, this study
found strong evidence that community assembly in this system can be
explained by competition and character displacement along ecological
gradients.