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| Sanchez-Barradas, A.; Villalobos, F. | |
| Species geographical co-occurrence and the effect of Grinnellian and Eltonian niche partitioning: The case of a Neotropical felid assemblage | |
| 2019 Ecological Research (35): 382-393 | |
Understanding local coexistence and broad-scale species co-occurrence patterns are central questions in ecology and macroecology. Niche theory relates both spatial scales by considering the resources (Eltonian niche) and conditions (Grinnellian niche) used by species and allow us to assess the contribution of these factors for species co-occurrence. Indeed, combining local field data on diet preferences and climatic variables across species distributions can help us to evaluate their co-occurrence while jointly considering resources and conditions on niche partitioning. Here, using information drawn from literature, we evaluated the relationship between geographic, climatic (Grinnellian) and trophic (Eltonian) niche dimensions among five highly sympatric felid species in favoring species co-occurrence at broad spatial scales across the Neotropical region. We obtain potential geographic distributions of species through ecological niche models. Then, we calculated the pairwise species overlaps for each niche dimension and tested for a relationship between each pair of dimensions using Mantel and partial Mantel tests. We found a positive and significant relationship between geographic co-occurrence and climatic overlap. This relationship remained after controlling for trophic overlap. Geographic and trophic overlap, as well as climatic and trophic overlap, did not show significant relationships. We conclude that the high degree of geographic co-occurrence among our studied felid species is favored by climate and that their high degree of trophic overlap is not limiting their co-occurrence pattern. |
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