Data from: A new integrative framework for large-scale assessments of biodiversity and community dynamics, using littoral gastropods and crabs of British Columbia, Canada

Improving our understanding of species responses to environmental changes is an important contribution ecologists can make to facilitate effective management decisions. Novel synthetic approaches to assessing biodiversity and ecosystem integrity are needed, ideally including all species living in a community and the dynamics defining their ecological relationships. Here we present and apply an integrative approach that links high-throughput, multi-character taxonomy with community ecology. The overall purpose is to enable the coupling of biodiversity assessments with investigations into the nature of ecological interactions in a community-level data set. We collected 1,195 gastropods and crabs in British Columbia. First, the General mixed Yule-coalescent (GMYC) and the Poisson Tree Processes (PTP) methods for proposing primary species-hypotheses based on cox1 sequences were evaluated against an integrative taxonomic framework. We then used data on the geographic distribution of delineated species to test species co-occurrence patterns for non-randomness using community-wide and pairwise approaches. Results showed that PTP generally outperformed GMYC and thus constitutes a more effective option for producing species-hypotheses in community-level datasets. Non-random species co-occurrence patterns indicative of ecological relationships or habitat preferences were observed for grazer gastropods, whereas assemblages of opportunistic omnivorous gastropods and crabs appeared influenced by random processes. Species-pair associations were consistent with current ecological knowledge, thus suggesting that applying community assembly within a large taxonomical framework constitutes a valuable tool for assessing ecological interactions. Combining phylogenetic, morphological and co-occurrence data enabled an integrated view of communities, providing both a conceptual and pragmatic framework for biodiversity assessments and investigations into community dynamics.提升我们对物种响应环境变化的理解，是生态学家为助力制定有效管理决策所能做出的重要贡献。当前亟需新颖的综合方法来评估生物多样性与生态系统完整性，理想情况下应涵盖群落内的所有物种，以及定义其生态关系的动态过程。在此我们提出并应用了一种整合性方法，将高通量多特征分类学与群落生态学相结合。本研究的总体目标是，实现在群落水平数据集内，将生物多样性评估与群落生态相互作用本质的调查相结合。我们在不列颠哥伦比亚省采集了1195件腹足类与蟹类标本。首先，针对基于cox1序列提出初始物种假说的广义混合尤尔-溯祖模型（General mixed Yule-coalescent, GMYC）与泊松树过程方法（Poisson Tree Processes, PTP），我们参照整合分类学框架对其进行了评估。随后，我们利用划定物种的地理分布数据，通过群落水平与成对分析方法，检验物种共现模式的非随机性。研究结果显示，PTP方法整体表现优于GMYC模型，因此在群落水平数据集的物种假说生成中，是更为高效的选择。植食性腹足类呈现出反映生态相互作用或生境偏好的非随机物种共现模式，而机会性杂食性腹足类与蟹类的类群则似乎受随机过程影响。物种种间关联与当前生态学认知相符，这表明在大型分类学框架下应用群落组装理论，是评估生态相互作用的宝贵工具。整合系统发育、形态学与共现数据，使我们能够获得群落的整合视图，为生物多样性评估以及群落动态研究提供了兼具概念性与实用性的研究框架。