Drivers of Anuran Assemblage Structure in a Subtropical Montane Region

Bassetto, Kauan, Carvalho-Rocha, Vítor, Peres, Carlos A. and Neckel-Oliveira, Selvino (2024) Drivers of Anuran Assemblage Structure in a Subtropical Montane Region. Ecology and Evolution, 14 (12). ISSN 2045-7758

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Abstract

Elevation gradients provide excellent semi-experimental conditions to investigate how the spatial distribution of biodiversity is shaped by the environment. Here, we investigate how temperature, productivity, and elevation are related to the diversity of anuran assemblages in a montane region of the southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest. We sampled 20 half-hectare plots between 2020 and 2021, distributed along a sharp elevation gradient. Anuran species richness and abundance decreased with increasing elevation. We show a positive relationship between ambient temperature and frog species richness and abundance, highlighting the importance of temperature in shaping assemblages along the elevation gradient. In contrast, productivity did not affect species richness and abundance, suggesting that available energy via resources does not limit local frog diversity. We further observed marked differences in the composition of anuran assemblages between low and high elevation areas, which were related to temperature. Beta diversity is mainly driven by species replacements among assemblages, which were likely related to environmental conditions. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating protected areas that encompass the entire range of elevations to capture the full complement of landscape-scale diversity. This is crucial as species showed limited distributions, and the marked effects of temperature should be explicitly considered under future scenarios of elevated upslope warming.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability Statement: All the data generated or analyzed during this study are provided in Data S1 (Bassetto et al. 2024)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	atlantic forest,elevation,elevational gradient,frogs,montane forest,species diversity,ecology, evolution, behavior and systematics,ecology,nature and landscape conservation ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1105
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Biology Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	26 Mar 2026 17:30
Last Modified:	26 Mar 2026 17:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/102601
DOI:	10.1002/ece3.70624

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