Data for Body mass-related changes in mammal community assembly patterns during the late Quaternary of North America

The late Quaternary of North America was marked by prominent ecological changes, including the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction, the spread of human settlements, and the rise of agriculture. Here we examine the mechanistic reasons for temporal changes in mammal species association and body size during this time period. Building upon the co-occurrence results from Lyons et al. (2016) – wherein each species pair was classified as spatially aggregated, segregated, or random – we examined body mass differences (BMD) between each species pair for each association type and time period (Late Pleistocene: 40,000 14C - 11,700 14C ybp, Holocene: 11,700 14C - 50 ybp, and Modern: 50 - 0 yrs). In the Late Pleistocene and Holocene, the BMD of both aggregated and segregated species pairs was significantly smaller than the BMD of random pairs. These results are consistent with environmental filtering and competition as important drivers of community structure in both time periods. Modern assemblag...北美晚第四纪时期以显著的生态剧变为特征，涵盖更新世末期巨型动物群灭绝、人类定居范围扩张与农业兴起。本研究旨在解析该时期内哺乳动物物种关联模式与体型大小随时间变化的机制性成因。本研究基于里昂等人（2016）的物种共现分析结果——该研究将每一对物种划分为空间聚集、空间分隔或随机分布三类——针对不同物种关联类型与时间阶段（更新世晚期：40000¹⁴C年-11700¹⁴C年距今，全新世：11700¹⁴C年-50年距今，现代：50年-0年），分析了每一对物种的体质量差（body mass differences, BMD）。在更新世晚期与全新世时期，空间聚集型和空间分隔型物种对的体质量差均显著小于随机分布型物种对的体质量差。上述结果表明环境过滤与种间竞争是这两个时期群落结构形成的重要驱动因素。现代群落（assemblag……）