Macroecological drivers of zooplankton communities across the mountains of western North America

Disentangling the environmental and spatial drivers of biological communities across large scales increasingly challenges modern ecology in a rapidly changing world. Here, we investigate the hierarchical and trait-based organization of regional and local factors of zooplankton communities at a macroscale of 1,240 mountain lakes and ponds spanning western North America (California, USA, to Yukon Territory, Canada). Variation partitioning was used to test the hypothesized importance of climate, connectivity, catchment features, and exotic sportfish to zooplankton beta-diversity in the context of key functional traits (body size and reproductive dispersal potential) given the pronounced environmental heterogeneity (e.g. thermal gradients), topographic barriers, and legacy of stocked fish in mountainous regions. Dispersal limitation was inferred from multispecies patch connectivity estimates based on nearest and average distances to occupied patches. Environmental heterogeneity best explain...

在全球快速变化的当下，厘清大尺度下生物群落的环境与空间驱动因子，正日益成为现代生态学面临的核心挑战。本研究以横跨北美西部（从美国加利福尼亚州至加拿大育空地区）的1240个山地湖泊与池塘为研究对象，开展大尺度研究，探讨浮游动物群落的区域与局地因子所对应的层级化组织模式，以及其基于功能性状（functional traits）的构建规律。考虑到山地生态系统中显著的环境异质性（如温度梯度）、地形屏障以及人工放流鱼类的遗留效应，本研究采用变异分割分析（variation partitioning），检验气候、连通性、集水区特征与外来游钓鱼类对浮游动物β多样性（beta-diversity）的重要性的预设假说，分析过程纳入了体型（body size）与生殖扩散潜力（reproductive dispersal potential）两类关键功能性状。本研究通过基于已占据斑块的最近距离与平均距离计算得到的多物种斑块连通性指标，推断群落的扩散限制效应。环境异质性最能解释……