What is it about?
This study combined global rodent range maps, functional traits, and phylogenetic trees to examine how rodent assemblages are structured across all terrestrial biomes. More than 10,000 assemblages were compared to determine whether co-occurring species are more or less similar than expected in their evolutionary relationships and functional traits.
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Why is it important?
Most rodent assemblages did not differ significantly from random associations of species. Phylogenetic and functional structure were only weakly correlated, varied with spatial scale, and sometimes differed between current and historical distributions, indicating that these two dimensions of biodiversity capture different aspects of community assembly and that human activity has altered some large-scale patterns.
Perspectives
This study extends earlier work on desert rodent communities to a global scale. One of its main messages is that there is no single universal pattern of rodent community structure, and that conclusions depend on whether evolutionary relatedness, functional traits, spatial scale, or historical distributions are considered.
Bader H. Alhajeri
Kuwait University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Global phylogenetic and functional structure of rodent assemblages, Ecography, April 2025, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/ecog.07534.
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