DOI: 10.5061/dryad.dq383
title: Data from: Phylogenetic community structure of North American desert bats: influence of environment at multiple spatial and taxonomic scales

description: 1. Numerous processes influence community structure. The relative
 importance of these processes are thought to vary with spatial, temporal,
 and taxonomic scale: density dependent interactions are thought to be most
 influential at small scales, at intermediate scales environmental
 conditions may be the most influential factor, and biogeographic processes
 are thought to be of greater importance at larger scales. Additionally,
 the stress-dominance hypothesis suggests that communities experiencing
 harsher environmental conditions will be predominantly structured by
 habitat filtering whereas communities experiencing more favorable
 conditions will be structured predominantly by density dependent
 interactions such as competition. 2. The aim of this study was to
 investigate the influence of environmental factors on phylogenetic
 community structure (PCS) of North American desert bats at multiple
 spatial and taxonomic scales. We also examined if the stress-dominance
 hypothesis is upheld in desert bats across an environmental gradient. 3.
 PCS metrics were calculated using species pools that differed in spatial
 (from all deserts to individual deserts) and taxonomic (all bat taxa, a
 single family, and a single genus) scale. We calculated mean temperature,
 precipitation, and seasonality for each site to determine if environmental
 gradients were related to degree of community structure. 4. At the largest
 spatial and taxonomic scales, communities were significantly
 phylogenetically clustered while degree of clustering decreased at the
 smallest spatial and taxonomic scales. Climatic data, particularly mean
 temperature and temperature seasonality, were important predictors of PCS
 at larger scales and under harsher conditions, but at smaller scales and
 in less stressful conditions there was a weaker relationship between PCS
 and climate. 5. This suggests that North American deserts, while harsh,
 are not uniform in the challenges they present to the faunas residing in
 them. Overall, the relationship between PCS and climatic data at large
 spatial and taxonomic scales, and in harsher conditions, suggests the
 influence of habitat filtering has been important in North American desert
 bat community assembly and that other processes have been important at
 smaller scales.
description: Community
 dataThe community data files
 are bat abundance/absence matrices for the family Vespertilionidae and the
 genus Myotis. Community data for all bat taxa can be found at
 http://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.627ck. Communities were delimited in 6 ways:
 five km bufferes, ten km buffers, five km grids, ten km grids, fifty km
 circles, and one hundred km circles.Environmental and PCS
 dataThe environmental and
 PCS data files contain the output of phylogenetic community structure
 (PCS) analyses and the average environmental conditions for each spatial
 scale, taxonomic scale, and community delimitation method combination.
 Communities were delimited in 6 ways: five km bufferes, ten km buffers,
 five km grids, ten km grids, fifty km circles, and one hundred km circles.
 Average environmental conditions were calculated by importing layers from
 WorldClim into ArcGIS, then calculating the mean for each delimitation
 method using the Zonal Statistics as Table function.