Scaling the relative dominance of exogenous drivers in structuring desert small mammal´s assemblages.

RODRÍGUEZ, MARÍA DANIELA; OJEDA RICARDO ALBERTO

ACTA OECOLOGICA-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY

GAUTHIER-VILLARS/EDITIONS ELSEVIER

Año: 2015 vol. 69 p. 173 - 181

1146-609X

Assemblage patterns could be primarily generated by two types of drivers: exogenous (such as environmentaland climatic factors) and endogenous (interactions such as competition, predation, mutualismor herbivory). The most widely accepted hypothesis states that at smaller scales (such as patch scale),interspecific interactions are the major drivers structuring communities, whereas at larger regionalscales, factors such as climate, topography and soil act as ecological filters that determine assemblagecomposition. The general aim of this paper is to compare different exogenous drivers in terms of theirrelative dominance in structuring desert small mammal communities across a range of spatial scales,from patch to regional, and compare them with previous results on endogenous drivers. Our results showthat as spatial scale increases, the explanatory power of exogenous factors also increases, e.g. from 17% atthe patch scale (i.e. abundance) to 99% at the regional scale (i.e. diversity). Moreover, environmentaldrivers vary in type and strength depending on the community estimator across several spatial scales. Onthe other hand, endogenous drivers such as interspecific interactions are more important at the patchscale, diminishing in importance towards the regional scale. Therefore, the relative importance ofexogenous versus endogenous drivers affects small mammal assemblage structure at different spatialscales. Our results fill up a knowledge gap concerning ecological drivers of assemblage structure at intermediatespatial scales for Monte desert small mammals, and highlight the importance of dealing withmulti-causal factors in explaining ecological patterns of assemblages.