Odonata metacommunity structure in northern ecosystems is driven by temperature and latitude

Metacommunities of tropical Odonata show species turnover following latitude and temperature gradients but there are no such large-scale studies for other regions. We performed EMS analysis with data for the Odonata of British Columbia, Canada, testing the role of five environmental variables (temperature, latitude, altitude, precipitation, landcover typology) in structuring the metacommunities and their turnover.

The metacommunity concept, defined as a set of local communities connected by species dispersal, provides deep understanding of large-scale ecological processes. The elements of the metacommunity structure (EMS) framework use occurrence data to differentiate among different patterns (i.e., checkerboard, nestedness, species turnover).