Disentangling the effects of geographic distance, environment and history on beta diversity of freshwater fish at a biogeographical crossroads

Xiaoming Jiang; Jiaping Mao; Zhiwei Sun; Janne Alahuhta; Jani Heino; Dekui He

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.120490

Disentangling the effects of geographic distance, environment and history on beta diversity of freshwater fish at a biogeographical crossroads

J Environ Manage. 2024 Mar:355:120490. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.120490. Epub 2024 Mar 7.

Authors

Xiaoming Jiang¹, Jiaping Mao², Zhiwei Sun², Janne Alahuhta³, Jani Heino³, Dekui He⁴

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Eco-hydraulic in Northwest Arid Region of China, Xi'an University of Technology, Xi'an, 710048, Shaanxi, China; Geography Research Unit, University of Oulu, P. O. Box 8000, FI-90014, Oulu, Finland.
² State Key Laboratory of Eco-hydraulic in Northwest Arid Region of China, Xi'an University of Technology, Xi'an, 710048, Shaanxi, China.
³ Geography Research Unit, University of Oulu, P. O. Box 8000, FI-90014, Oulu, Finland.
⁴ Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China. Electronic address: hedekui@ihb.ac.cn.

PMID: 38457897
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.120490

Abstract

Examining assemblage turnover and variation along geographic and environmental distances is a useful approach to evaluate beta diversity patterns and associated driving mechanisms. However, such studies are relatively limited in freshwater systems. Here, we compared the relationships between freshwater fish beta diversity and geographic distances among 165 hydrological units (HUs) in four zoogeographical regions (PA, Palearctic Region; CA, High Central Asia; EA, East Asia, SA, South Asia) across China and adjacent areas. This area can be considered a biogeographical crossroads, where faunal composition shares elements with different biogeographic and evolutionary origins. We found a considerably high level of between-HU overall dissimilarity (β_sor, range from ca. 0.60 to 0.85) in all four regions, mainly due to the turnover component (the relative contribution of β_sim to β_sor ranged from 60% to 90%). In general, β_sor and β_sim both significantly increased with geographic distance (except in PA), whereas the nestedness-resultant component (β_sne) decreased with geographic distance. The intercepts and slopes of the relationships between dissimilarities and distance (RDDs) both varied significantly among the four regions. The intercepts of β_sor and β_sim were both highest in SA, followed by CA, PA and EA, implying different levels of fish faunal heterogeneity at short distances. In contrast, the slopes of these two dissimilarities followed the decreasing trend from EA > CA > SA > PA, suggesting different environmental suitability and dispersal ability of fish species among regions. Variation partitioning in distance-based redundancy analysis showed that the spatial and historical factors were more important than area-heterogeneity and energy factors across all HUs and within three individual ecoregions (EA, SA and CA), but spatial factors were non-significant in PA. Our study highlighted the usefulness of RDDs in understanding biogeographical patterns and enhancing the biodiversity conservation of freshwater fishes.

Keywords: Dispersal ability; Freshwater fish; Historical role; Niche process; Spatial distance; Taxonomic dissimilarity.

MeSH terms

Animals
Biodiversity*
China
Fishes
Fresh Water*