Spatial patterns and ecological drivers of soil nematode β-diversity in natural grasslands vary among vegetation types and trophic position

1. Understanding biogeographic patterns of community assemblages is a core objective in ecology, but for soil communities these patterns are poorly understood. To understand the spatial patterns and underlying mechanisms of β-diversity in soil communities, we investigated the β-diversity of soil nematode communities along a 3200 km transect across semi-arid and arid grasslands.

2. Spatial turnover and nested-resultant are the two fundamental components of β-diversity, which have been attributed to various processes of community assembly. We calculated the spatial turnover and nested-resultant components of soil nematode β-diversity based on the β-partitioning framework. Distance matrices for the dissimilarity of soil nematode communities were computed using the “Sørensen” method. We fitted negative exponential models to compare the distance decay patterns in nematode community similarity with geographic distance and plant community distance in three vegetation types (desert, desert s...