PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Animal body size exhibits rapid responses to environmental variations and displays considerable variability across ecological scales, significantly influencing ecological community assembly. However, our understanding of the extent of body size variation and its responses to environmental differences within soil fauna remains limited, impeding a comprehensive grasp of soil fauna\'s functional ecology. Here, we aim to investigate the magnitude of intrageneric body size variation and its implications for soil nematode community assembly along an altitudinal gradient. We examined soil nematode body size responses along an altitudinal gradient spanning from 3136 to 4128 m in an alpine mountain region of the eastern Tibetan Plateau. We assessed the contributions of intra- and intergeneric variations in body size, both within and among communities, using individual body size values. The implications of these variations for community assembly processes were determined through phenotypic variance ratios employing permutation tests. Our analyses did not reveal statistically significant correlations between altitude and the community-weighted mean body mass, regardless of considering intrageneric trait variation (IGTV). Approximately 15% of the variation in body size among communities and a substantial 72% of the variation in body size within communities can be attributed to IGTV. Altitude did not significantly affect IGTV within or among communities. Furthermore, our results underscored the dominant role of internal filtering within the community in governing nematode community assembly, with external filtering outside the community playing a limited role within our altitudinal range. Our findings emphasize the dominant role of body size variation within communities rather than among communities, attributable to strong internal filtering processes. These findings advance our understanding of body size variation in soil nematodes across ecological scales and highlight the pivotal role of intrageneric variation in shaping the functional ecology of soil fauna.
摘要：
动物的体型表现出对环境变化的快速反应，并在整个生态尺度上表现出相当大的变异性。显著影响生态群落组装。然而,我们对体型变化的程度及其对土壤动物内部环境差异的反应的理解仍然有限，阻碍了对土壤动物功能生态学的全面把握。这里,我们的目的是研究沿海拔梯度的地势内体型变化的幅度及其对土壤线虫群落组装的影响。我们研究了青藏高原东部高山地区沿海拔梯度从3136到4128m的土壤线虫体型响应。我们评估了体型大小的种内和种间差异的贡献，在社区内部和社区之间，使用单独的体型值。这些变化对社区组装过程的影响是通过使用置换测试的表型方差比确定的。我们的分析没有揭示海拔高度和社区加权平均体重之间的统计学显着相关性，无论考虑到性别内性状变异(IGTV)。社区之间大约15％的体型变化和社区内72％的体型变化可归因于IGTV。海拔高度对社区内或社区之间的IGTV没有显着影响。此外，我们的结果强调了社区内部过滤在管理线虫社区集会中的主导作用，社区外的外部过滤在我们的海拔范围内起着有限的作用。我们的发现强调了身体大小变化在社区内而不是社区之间的主导作用，归因于强大的内部过滤过程。这些发现增进了我们对生态尺度上土壤线虫的体型变化的理解，并强调了地内变异在塑造土壤动物功能生态学中的关键作用。
