While there are numerous studies of diversity patterns both within local communities and at regional scales, the intermediate scale of tens to thousands of km2 is often neglected. Here we present detailed local data on plant communities (using 20 × 20 m plots) and bird communities (using point counts) for a 50 ha ForestGEO plot in lowland rainforest at Wanang, Papua New Guinea. We compare these local diversity patterns with those documented in the surrounding 10,000 ha of lowland rainforest. Woody plant species richness was lower within 50 ha (88% of 10,000 ha richness), even when both were surveyed with identical sampling effort. In contrast, bird communities exhibited identical species accumulation patterns at both spatial scales. Similarity in species composition (Chao-Jaccard) remained constant while similarity in dominance structure (Bray-Curtis) decreased with increased distance between samples across the range from < 1 to 13.8 km for both plant and bird communities. The similarity decay was more rapid in plants, but in both cases was slow. The results indicate low to zero beta-diversity at the spatial scale represented here, particularly for birds but also for woody plants. A 50 ha plot provided a highly accurate representation of broader-scale diversity and community composition within 10,000 ha for birds, and a relatively good representation for woody plants. This suggests potential for wider generalization of data from ForestGEO plots which are almost always locally unreplicated, at least for those in lowland tropical forest.

Biology Centre Institute of Entomology Czech Academy of Sciences Branišovská 1760 370 05 Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic

Department of Evolution Behaviour and Environment School of Life Sciences University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QG UK

Department of Plant Biology University of Minnesota Saint Paul MN 55108 USA

Faculty of Science Charles University Viničná 7 128 44 Prague Czech Republic

Faculty of Science University of South Bohemia Branišovská 31 370 05 Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic

New Guinea Binatang Research Centre Madang Madang Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea Forest Research Institute Lae Morobe Papua New Guinea

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Anderson-Teixeira KJ, Davies SJ, Bennett AC, Gonzalez-Akre EB, Muller-Landau HC, Wright SJ, Abu Salim K, Almeyda Zambrano AM, Alonso A, Baltzer JL, Basset Y, Bourg NA, Broadbent EN, Brockelman WY, Bunyavejchewin S, Burslem DFRP, Butt N, Cao M, Cardenas D, Chuyong GB, Clay K, Cordell S, Dattaraja HS, Deng X, Detto M, Du X, Duque A, Erikson DL, Ewango CEN, Fischer GA, Fletcher C, Foster RB, Giardina CP, Gilbert GS, Gunatilleke N, Gunatilleke S, Hao Z, Hargrove WW, Hart TB, Hau BCH, He F, Hoffman FM, Howe RW, Hubbell SP, Inman-Narahari FM, Jansen PA, Jiang M, Johnson DJ, Kanzaki M, Kassim AR, Kenfack D, Kibet S, Kinnaird MF, Korte L, Kral K, Kumar J, Larson AJ, Li Y, Li X, Liu S, Lum SKY, Lutz JA, Ma K, Maddalena DM, Makana JR, Malhi Y, Marthews T, Mat Serudin R, Mcmahon SM, McShea WJ, Memiaghe HR, Mi X, Mizuno T, Morecroft M, Myers JA, Novotny V, de Oliveira AA, Ong PS, Orwig DA, Ostertag R, den Ouden J, Parker GG, Phillips RP, Sack L, Sainge MN, Sang W, Sri-ngernyuang K, Sukumar R, Sun IF, Sungpalee W, Suresh HS, Tan S, Thomas SC, Thomas DW, Thompson J, Turner BL, Uriarte M, Valencia R, Vallejo MI, Vicentini A, Vrška T, Wang X, Wang X, Weiblen G, Wolf A, Xu H, Yap S, Zimmerman J. CTFS-ForestGEO: A worldwide network monitoring forests in an era of global change. Glob Chang Biol. 2015;21:528–549. doi: 10.1111/gcb.12712. PubMed DOI

Arrhenius O. Species and area. J Ecol. 1921;9:95–99. doi: 10.2307/2255763. DOI

Ashton PS. What can be learned from a 50-ha plot which cannot be learned any other way? In: Lee H, Ashton P, Ogino K, editors. Long term ecological research of tropical rain forest in Sarawak. studies of global environmental change with special reference to Asia and pacific Regions. Matsuyama: Ehime University; 1995. pp. 207–220.

Barton PS, Cunningham SA, Manning AD, Gibb H, Lindenmayer DB, Didham RK. The spatial scaling of beta diversity. Glob Ecol Biogeogr. 2013;22:639–647. doi: 10.1111/geb.12031. DOI

Basset Y, Cizek L, Cuenoud P, Didham RK, Guilhaumon F, Missa O, Novotny V, Odegaard F, Roslin T, Schmidl J, Tishechkin AK, Winchester NN, Roubik DW, Aberlenc H-P, Bail J, Barrios H, Bridle JR, Castano-Meneses G, Corbara B, Curletti G, Duarte da Rocha W, De Bakker D, Delabie JHC, Dejean A, Fagan LL, Floren A, Kitching RL, Medianero E, Miller SE, Gama de Oliveira E, Orivel J, Pollet M, Rapp M, Ribeiro SP, Roisin Y, Schmidt JB, Sorensen L, Leponce M. Arthropod diversity in a tropical forest. Science. 2012;338:1481–1484. doi: 10.1126/science.1226727. PubMed DOI

Beaudrot L, Rejmánek M, Marshall AJ. Dispersal modes affect tropical forest assembly across trophic levels. Ecography. 2013;36:984–993. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0587.2013.00122.x. DOI

Bibby CJ, Burgess ND, Hill DA. bird census techniques. 2. London: Academic Press; 2000.

Blake JG. Neotropical forest bird communities: a comparison of species richness and composition at local and regional scales. Condor. 2007;109:237–255. doi: 10.1650/0010-5422(2007)109. DOI

Chao A, Chazdon RL, Colwell RK, Shen T-J. A new statistical approach for assessing similarity of species composition with incidence and abundance data. Ecol Lett. 2005;8:148–159. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2004.00707.x. DOI

Chao A, Gotelli NJ, Hsieh TC, Sander EL, Colwell RK. Rarefaction and extrapolation with Hill numbers: a framework for sampling and estimation in species diversity studies. Ecol Monogr. 2014;84:45–67. doi: 10.1890/13-0133.1. DOI

Chase JM. Spatial scale resolves the niche versus neutral theory debate. J Veg Sci. 2014;25:319–322. doi: 10.1111/jvs.12159. DOI

Chen Y, Wright SJ, Muller-Landau HC, Hubbell SP, Wang Y, Yu S. Positive effects of neighborhood complementarity on tree growth in a Neotropical forest. Ecology. 2016;97:776–785. doi: 10.1890/15-0625.1. PubMed DOI

Colwell RK, Coddington JA. Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation. Philos Trans Biol Sci. 1994;345:101–118. doi: 10.2307/3544596. PubMed DOI

Condit R. Research in large, long-term tropical forest plots. Trends Ecol Evol. 1995;10:18–22. doi: 10.1016/S0169-5347(00)88955-7. PubMed DOI

Condit R. Tropical forest census plots: methods and results from Barro Colorado Island, Panama and a comparison with other plots. Berlin: Springer-Verlag; 1998.

Condit R, Hubbell SP, Lafrankie JV, Sukumar R, Manokaran N, Foster RB, Ashton PS. Species-area and species-individual relationships for tropical trees: a comparison of three 50-ha plots. J Ecol. 1996;84:549–562. doi: 10.2307/2261477. DOI

Condit R, Pitman NCA, Leigh EG, Jr, Chave J, Terborgh J, Foster RB, Núñez VP, Aguilar S, Valencia R, Villa G, Muller-Landau HC, Losos E, Hubbell SP. Beta-diversity in tropical forest trees. Science. 2002;295:666–669. doi: 10.1126/science.1066854. PubMed DOI

Connor EF, McCoy ED. The statistics and biology of the species-area relationship. Am Nat. 1979;113:791–833. doi: 10.1086/283438. DOI

Crawley MJ, Harral JE. Scale dependence in plant biodiversity. Science. 2001;291:864–868. doi: 10.1126/science.291.5505.864. PubMed DOI

De Cáceres M, Legendre P, Valencia R, Cao M, Chang LW, Chuyong G, Condit R, Hao Z, Hsieh CF, Hubbell S, Kenfack D, Ma K, Mi X, Supardi Noor MN, Kassim AR, Ren H, Su SH, Sun IF, Thomas D, Ye W, He F. The variation of tree beta diversity across a global network of forest plots. Glob Ecol Biogeogr. 2012;21:1191–1202. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2012.00770.x. DOI

Field R, Hawkins BA, Cornell HV, Currie DJ, Diniz-Filho JAF, Guégan JF, Kaufman DM, Kerr JT, Mittelbach GG, Oberdorff T, O’Brien EM, Turner JRG. Spatial species-richness gradients across scales: a meta-analysis. J Biogeogr. 2009;36:132–147. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2008.01963.x. DOI

Freestone AL, Inouye BD. Dispersal limitation and environmental heterogeneity shape scale-dependent diversity patterns in plant communities. Ecology. 2006;87:2425–2432. doi: 10.1890/0012-9658(2006)87[2425:DLAEHS]2.0.CO;2. PubMed DOI

Gallardo-Cruz J, Meave J, Pérez-García E, Hernández-Stefanoni J. Spatial structure of plant communities in a complex tropical landscape: implications for β-diversity. Community Ecol. 2010;11:202–210. doi: 10.1556/comec.11.2010.2.8. DOI

Gaston KJ. Global patterns in biodiversity. Nature. 2000;405:220–227. doi: 10.1038/35012228. PubMed DOI

Gotelli NJ, Colwell RK. Quantifying biodiversity: procedures and pitfalls in the measurement and comparison of species richness. Ecol Lett. 2001;4:379–391. doi: 10.1046/j.1461-0248.2001.00230.x. DOI

Hsieh TC, Ma KH, Chao A. iNEXT: An R package for rarefaction and extrapolation of species diversity (Hill numbers) Methods Ecol Evol. 2016;7:1451–1456. doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.12613. DOI

Hubbell SP. The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2001. PubMed

Hubbell SP, Foster RB. Diversity of canopy trees in a neotropical forest and implications for conservation. In: Sutton S, Whitmore T, Chadwick A, editors. Tropical rain forest: ecology and management. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications; 1983. pp. 25–41.

Huston MA. Local processes and regional patterns: appropriate scales for understanding variation in the diversity of plants and animals. Oikos. 1999;86:393–401. doi: 10.2307/3546645. DOI

Idárraga Á, Duque-Montoya ÁJ, Feeley K. Divergent drivers of tree community composition in lowland and highland forests of the northern tropical Andes, Colombia. Actual Biol. 2016;38:145–156. doi: 10.17533/udea.acbi.v37n105a02. DOI

Jackson HB, Fahrig L. Are ecologists conducting research at the optimal scale? Glob Ecol Biogeogr. 2015;24:52–63. doi: 10.1111/geb.12233. DOI

Jankowski JE, Merkord CL, Rios WF, Cabrera KG, Revilla NS, Silman MR. The relationship of tropical bird communities to tree species composition and vegetation structure along an Andean elevational gradient. J Biogeogr. 2013;40:950–962. doi: 10.1111/jbi.12041. DOI

Kenfack D, Thomas DW, Chuyong G, Condit R. Rarity and abundance in a diverse African forest. Biodivers Conserv. 2007;16:2045–2074. doi: 10.1007/s10531-006-9065-2. DOI

Kochummen KM, LaFrankie JV. Floristic composition of Pasoh forest reserve, a lowland rain forest in peninsular Malaysia. J Trop For Sci. 1990;3:1–13.

Korhonen L, Heikkinen J. Automated analysis of in situ canopy images for the estimation of forest canopy cover. For Sci. 2009;55:323–334. doi: 10.1093/forestscience/55.4.323. DOI

Lafrankie J. Distribution and abundance of Malayan trees: Significance of family characteristics for conservation. Gard Bull Singap. 1996;48:75–87.

Laliberté E, Paquette A, Legendre P, Bouchard A. Assessing the scale-specific importance of niches and other spatial processes on beta diversity: a case study from a temperate forest. Oecologia. 2008;159:377–388. doi: 10.1007/s00442-008-1214-8. PubMed DOI

Lee HS, Davies SJ, Lafrankie JV, Tan S, Yamakura T, Itoh A, Ohkubo T, Ashton PS. Floristic and structural diversity of mixed dipterocarp forest in Lambir Hills National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia. J Trop For Sci. 2002;14:379–400.

Legendre P, Legendre L. Numerical ecology. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science BV; 2012.

Lennon JJ, Kolefft P, Greenwood JJD, Gaston KJ. The geographical structure of British bird distributions: diversity, spatial turnover and scale. J Anim Ecol. 2001;70:966–979. doi: 10.1046/j.0021-8790.2001.00563.x. DOI

Macarthur R, Levins R. The limiting similarity, convergence, and divergence of coexisting species. Am Nat. 1967;101:377–385. doi: 10.1086/282505. DOI

MacArthur JW, Wilson EO. The theory of island biogeography. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1967.

MacGregor-Fors I, Payton ME. Contrasting diversity values: statistical inferences based on overlapping confidence intervals. PLoS ONE. 2013;8:8–11. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056794. PubMed DOI PMC

Mathworks . Image Processing Toolbox (version 2015a) Framingham: Natick; 2015.

Melchior LG, de Rossa-Feres DC, da Silva FR. Evaluating multiple spatial scales to understand the distribution of anuran beta diversity in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Ecol Evol. 2017;7:2403–2413. doi: 10.1002/ece3.2852. PubMed DOI PMC

Metz MR. Does habitat specialization by seedlings contribute to the high diversity of a lowland rain forest? J Ecol. 2012;100:969–979. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2012.01972.x. DOI

Myers JA, Chase JM, Jiménez I, Jørgensen PM, Araujo-Murakami A, Paniagua-Zambrana N, Seidel R. Beta-diversity in temperate and tropical forests reflects dissimilar mechanisms of community assembly. Ecol Lett. 2013;16:151–157. doi: 10.1111/ele.12021. PubMed DOI

Nekola JC, White PS. The distance decay of similarity in biogeography and ecology. J Biogeogr. 1999;26:867–878. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2699.1999.00305.x. DOI

Novotny V, Drozd P, Miller SE, Kulfan M, Janda M, Basset Y, Weiblen GD. Why are there so many species of herbivorous insects in tropical rainforests? Science. 2006;313:1115–1118. doi: 10.1126/science.1129237. PubMed DOI

Oksanen J, Blanchet FG, Friendly M, Kindt R, Legendre P, Mcglinn D, Minchin PR, O'Hara RB, Simpson GL, Solymos P, Stevens MHH, Szoecs E (2018) vegan: Community Ecology Package. R package version 2.5–3

Paijmans K. New guinea vegetation. Canberra: Australia National University Press; 1976.

Plotkin JB, Potts MD, Yu DW, Bunyavejchewin S, Condit R, Foster R, Hubbell S, LaFrankie J, Manokaran N, Lee HS, Sukumar R, Nowak MA, Ashton PJ. Predicting species diversity in tropical forests. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2001;97:10850–10854. doi: 10.1073/pnas.97.20.10850. PubMed DOI PMC

Plotkin JB, Chave J, Ashton PS. Cluster analysis of spatial patterns in Malaysian tree species. Am Nat. 2002;160:629–644. doi: 10.2307/3079114. PubMed DOI

Qian H. Global comparisons of beta diversity among mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians across spatial scales and taxonomic ranks. J Syst Evol. 2009;47:509–514. doi: 10.1111/j.1759-6831.2009.00043.x. DOI

Rahbek C. The role of spatial scale and the perception of large-scale species-richness patterns. Ecol Lett. 2005;8:224–239. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2004.00701.x. DOI

Rahbek C, Graves GR. Multiscale assessment of patterns of avian species richness. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2001;98:4534–4539. doi: 10.1073/pnas.071034898. PubMed DOI PMC

Reif J, Storch D, Šímová I. The effect of scale-dependent habitat gradients on the structure of bird assemblages in the Czech Republic. Acta Ornithol. 2008;43:197–206. doi: 10.3161/000164508X395315. DOI

Rosindell J, Hubbell SP, Etienne RS. The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography at age ten. Trends Ecol Evol. 2011;26:340–348. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2011.03.024. PubMed DOI

Scheiner SM, Cox SB, Willig M, Mittelbach GG, Osenberg C, Kaspari M. Species richness, species–area curves and Simpson’s paradox. Evol Ecol Res. 2000;2:791–802.

Schulze CH, Waltert M, Kessler PJA, Pitopang R, Shahabuddin VD, Mühlenberg M, Gradstein SR, Leuschner C, Steffan-Dewenter I, Tscharntke T. Biodiversity indicator groups of tropical land-use systems: comparing plants, birds, and insects. Ecol Appl. 2004;14:1321–1333. doi: 10.1890/02-5409. DOI

Seidler TG, Plotkin JB. Seed dispersal and spatial pattern in tropical trees. PLoS Biol. 2006;4:2132–2137. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040344. PubMed DOI PMC

Shmida A, Wilson MV. Biological determinants of species diversity. J Biogeogr. 1985;12:1. doi: 10.2307/2845026. DOI

Smilauer P, Leps J. Multivariate analysis of ecological data using Canoco 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2014.

Soininen J, Lennon JJ, Hillebrand H. A multivariate analysis of beta diversity across organisms and environment. Ecology. 2007;88:2830–2838. doi: 10.1890/06-1730.1. PubMed DOI

Thiollay J-M. Avian diversity and distribution in French Guiana: patterns across a large forest landscape. J Trop Ecol. 2002;18:471–498. doi: 10.1017/S026646740200233X. DOI

Van Houtan KS, Pimm SL, Halley JM, Bierregaard RO, Lovejoy TE. Dispersal of Amazonian birds in continuous and fragmented forest. Ecol Lett. 2007;10:219–229. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01004.x. PubMed DOI

Vandermeer JH. Niche theory. Annu Rev Ecol Syst. 1972;3:107–132. doi: 10.1146/annurev.es.03.110172.000543. DOI

Veech JA, Crist TO. Habitat and climate heterogeneity maintain beta-diversity of birds among landscapes within ecoregions. Glob Ecol Biogeogr. 2007;16:650–656. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2007.00315.x. DOI

Vincent JB, Henning B, Saulei S, Sosanika G, Weiblen GD. Forest carbon in lowland Papua New Guinea: Local variation and the importance of small trees. Austral Ecol. 2015;40:151–159. doi: 10.1111/aec.12187. PubMed DOI PMC

Volkov I, Banavar JR, He F, Hubbell SP, Maritan A. Density dependence explains tree species abundance and diversity in tropical forests. Nature. 2005;438:658–661. doi: 10.1038/nature04030. PubMed DOI

Volkov I, Banavar JR, Hubbell SP, Maritan A. Inferring species interactions in tropical forests. PNAS. 2009;106:13854–13859. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0903244106. PubMed DOI PMC

Wiens JA. Spatial scaling in ecology. Funct Ecol. 1989;3:385–397. doi: 10.2307/2389612. DOI

Willis KJ, Whittaker RJ. Species diversity-scale matters. Science. 2002;295:1245–1247. doi: 10.1126/science.1067335. PubMed DOI

Yang J, Swenson NG, Zhang G, Ci X, Cao M, Sha L, Li J, Ferry Slik JW, Lin L. Local-scale partitioning of functional and phylogenetic beta diversity in a tropical tree assemblage. Sci Rep. 2015;5:1–10. doi: 10.1038/srep12731. PubMed DOI PMC

Zellweger F, Roth T, Bugmann H, Bollmann K. Beta diversity of plants, birds and butterflies is closely associated with climate and habitat structure. Glob Ecol Biogeogr. 2017;26:898–906. doi: 10.1111/geb.12598. DOI