Partitioning beta diversity in a subtropical broad‐leaved forest of China

The classical environmental control model assumes that species distribution is determined by the spatial variation of underlying habitat conditions. This niche‐based model has recently been challenged by the neutral theory of biodiversity which assumes that ecological drift is a key process regulating species coexistence. Understanding the mechanisms that maintain biodiversity in communities critically depends on our ability to decompose the variation of diversity into the contributions of different processes affecting it. Here we investigated the effects of pure habitat, pure spatial, and spatially structured habitat processes on the distributions of species richness and species composition in a recently…