Variation among European beetle taxa in patterns of distance decay of similarity suggests a major role of dispersal processes

Abstract Background: Termites are ubiquitous insects in tropical and subtropical habitats, where they construct massive mounds from soil, their saliva and excreta. Termite mounds harbor an enormous amount of microbial inhabitants, which regulate multiple ecosystem functions such as mitigating methane emissions and increasing ecosystem resistance to climate change. However, we lack a mechanistic understanding about the role of termite mounds in modulating the microbial community assembly processes, which are essential to unravel the biological interactions of soil fauna and microorganisms, the major components of soil food webs. We conducted a large-scale survey across a >1500 km transect in northern Australia to investigate biogeographical patterns of bacterial and fungal community in 134 termite mounds and the relative importance of deterministic versus stochastic processes in microbial community assembly. Results: Microbial alpha (number of phylotypes) and beta (changes in bacterial and fungal community composition) significantly differed between termite mounds and surrounding soils. Microbial communities in termite mounds exhibited a significant distance-decay pattern, and fungal communities had a stronger distance-decay relationship (slope = -1.91) than bacteria (slope = -0.21). Based on the neutral community model (fitness < 0.7) and normalized stochasticity ratio index (NST) with a value below the 50% boundary point, deterministic selection, rather than stochastic forces, predominated the microbial community assembly in termite mounds. Deterministic processes exhibited significantly weaker impacts on bacteria (NST = 45.23%) than on fungi (NST = 33.72%), probably due to the wider habitat niche breadth and higher potential migration rate of bacteria. The abundance of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) was negatively correlated with bacterial/fungal biomass ratios, indicating that ARG content might be an important biotic factor that drove the biogeographic pattern of microbial communities in termite mounds. Conclusions: Deterministic processes play a more important role than stochastic processes in shaping the microbial community assembly in termite mounds, an unique habitat ubiquitously distributed in tropical and subtropical ecosystems. An improved understanding of the biogeographic patterns of microorganisms in termite mounds is crucial to decipher the role of soil faunal activities in shaping microbial community assembly, with implications for their mediated ecosystems functions and services.

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The distance decay of similarity in ecological communities

Ecography ◽

10.1111/j.0906-7590.2007.04817.x ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

pp. 3-12 ◽

Cited By ~ 569

Author(s):

Janne Soininen ◽

Robert McDonald ◽

Helmut Hillebrand

Keyword(s):

Distance Decay ◽

Ecological Communities ◽

Distance Decay Of Similarity

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Not everything is everywhere: the distance decay of similarity in a marine host-parasite system

Journal of Biogeography ◽

10.1111/j.1365-2699.2008.02000.x ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

pp. 200-209 ◽

Cited By ~ 44

Author(s):

Ana Pérez-del-Olmo ◽

Mercedes Fernández ◽

Juan Antonio Raga ◽

Aneta Kostadinova ◽

Serge Morand

Keyword(s):

Distance Decay ◽

Host Parasite ◽

Distance Decay Of Similarity

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Seagrass‐associated fungal communities show distance decay of similarity that has implications for seagrass management and restoration

Ecology and Evolution ◽

10.1002/ece3.5631 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (19) ◽

pp. 11288-11297 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Benjamin J. Wainwright ◽

Geoffrey L. Zahn ◽

Joshua Zushi ◽

Nicole Li Ying Lee ◽

Jillian Lean Sim Ooi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Distance Decay ◽

Fungal Communities ◽

Distance Decay Of Similarity

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A general framework for the distance-decay of similarity in ecological communities

Ecology Letters ◽

10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01202.x ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 904-917 ◽

Cited By ~ 199

Author(s):

Hélène Morlon ◽

George Chuyong ◽

Richard Condit ◽

Stephen Hubbell ◽

David Kenfack ◽

...

Keyword(s):

General Framework ◽

Distance Decay ◽

Ecological Communities ◽

Distance Decay Of Similarity

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The distance decay of similarity in climate variation and vegetation dynamics

Environmental Earth Sciences ◽

10.1007/s12665-014-3751-2 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 73 (8) ◽

pp. 4659-4670 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Zhiqiang Zhao ◽

Shuangcheng Li ◽

Jianguo Liu ◽

Jian Peng ◽

Yanglin Wang

Keyword(s):

Vegetation Dynamics ◽

Climate Variation ◽

Distance Decay ◽

Distance Decay Of Similarity

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The geometry of the distance-decay of similarity in ecological communities

10.1101/200212 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Joshua Ladau ◽

Jessica L. Green ◽

Katherine S. Pollard

Keyword(s):

Beta Diversity ◽

Functional Form ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Geometric Probability ◽

Distance Decay ◽

Quadratic Model ◽

Ecological Communities ◽

Tropical Vegetation ◽

Effective Conservation ◽

Distance Decay Of Similarity

AbstractUnderstanding beta-diversity has strong implications for evaluating the extent of biodiversity and formulating effective conservation policy. Here, we show that the distance-decay relationship, an important measure of beta-diversity, follows a universal form which we call the piecewise quadratic model. To derive the piecewise quadratic model, we develop a new conceptual framework which is based on geometric probability and several key insights about the roles of study design (e.g., plot dimensions and spatial distributions). We fit the piecewise quadratic model to six empirical distance-decay relationships, spanning a range of taxa and spatial scales, including surveys of tropical vegetation, mammals, and amphibians. We find that the model predicts the functional form of the relationships extremely well, with coefficients of determination in excess of 0.95. Moreover, the model predicts a phase transition at distance scales where sample plots are overlapping, which we confirm empirically. Our framework and model provide a fundamental, quantitative link between distance-decay relationships and the shapes of ranges of taxa.

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