Broad-scale patterns of geographic avoidance between species emerge in the absence of fine-scale mechanisms of coexistence

Aim: The need to forecast range shifts under future climate change has motivated an increasing interest in better understanding the role of biotic interactions in driving diversity patterns. The contribution of biotic interactions to shaping broad-scale species distributions is however, still debated, partly due to the difficulty of detecting their effects. We aim to test whether spatial exclusion between potentially competing species can be detected at the species range scale, and whether this pattern relates to fine-scale mechanisms of coexistence.

Location: Western Palearctic

Time period: Anthropocene

Taxa: bats (Chiroptera)

Methods: We develop and evaluate a measure of geographic avoidance that uses outputs of species distribution models to quantify geographic exclusion patterns expected if interspecific competition affects broad-scale distributions. We apply the measure to 10 Palearctic bat species belonging to four morphologically similar cryptic groups in which compet...