Functional diversity and spatial association analyses at different spatial scales reveal no changes in community assembly processes along an aridity gradient in the Atacama Desert

The structuring of plant assemblages along environmental gradients is typically explained by shifts from competition (limiting similarity) to environmental filtering as the environment becomes more stressful. However, facilitation, weaker-competitor exclusion, environmental heterogeneity, and the colonization-competition tradeoff can also structure plant assemblages along gradients. These assembly processes act on different plant traits and organs, and their prevalence varies with respect to the spatial scale. Using patterns of functional diversity, coupled with patterns of species association at two spatial scales, here we discern the assembly processes that structure shrub communities in four localities along an aridity gradient of the Atacama Desert. At each site, we calculated functional dispersion indexes for above- and below-ground traits, and patterns of species association at a patch and neighborhood scale. Our results revealed that at the patch scale in intermediate levels of aridity, the dominant assembly process was within-site environmental heterogeneity. At the neighborhood scale, communities are assembled mainly through random processes. Nonetheless, in some communities, the dominant assembly process was competition via limiting similarity or exclusion of the weaker competitor, and these did not change along the gradient. Together, these results reveal that environmental heterogeneity and competition are the main drivers of plant community assembly in a hyper-arid environment.