Integrando características das espécies na resposta da biodiversidade às mudanças ambientais em escala global e local

Abstract

Ecology has been seeking its adaptation as the environment shapes the structure of biological communities and these questions have gained more and more power due to the strong impact of tropic actions on ecological filters. Thus, recent study has shown that the response of species to environmental filters may differ in space, it depends on the observed scale and among the evaluated taxa. However, there is a gap in understanding the resources still contemplated to contemplate the different solutions observed. In this way, throughout the thesis we seek to contribute to the understanding of the groups involved in the assembly of communities on a global and local scale. For this, we carried out a macro-scale study evaluating how the contemporary climate and historical climate change determine the richness of tetrapod species. Through this study, we show that species characteristics are a strong mediator of the climate effect on species richness, but they are relevant in a different way for each of the metabolic and physiological singularities of these groups. Thus, we emphasize the importance of integrating the theory to understand the different bases developed. In the second chapter, we conducted a local experiment to understand how biological invasion and nutrient deposition affect communities, highlighting the role of trophic level in responding to the environment. Contrary to expectations, nutrient addition had no significant effect, while biological invasion emerged as a crucial factor, especially in the structure of predatory arthropod communities. We demonstrated that trophic interactions, including top-down and bottom-up control, are essential for understanding community responses to biological invasion. Therefore, in this thesis we highlight the mechanisms by which different environmental factors, on a global and local scale, determine community structure and highlight the role of species characteristics in determining the response of these communities.