Figure 1. Study site and design: A) habitat photo of the sampling plot;
B) Map of Sabah with elevation gradient presented; C) The top and side
view of the transect established within the forest plot (modified from
Dial et al. 2004a and Dial et al. 2006).
Figure 2. Heatmaps along with scatter plot showing the horizontal and
vertical distribution at 5 m vertical interval of (A) air temperature,
(B) relative humidity, (C) photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD),
and (D) total leaf area. Color with higher saturation indicate higher
value of the environmental variables.
Figure 3. Heatmaps along with scatter plot showing vertical and
horizontal distribution of (A) species abundance (ln( x+1)
transformed)) and (B) species richness. Color with higher saturation
indicate higher value.
Figure 4. Linear relationships between pairwise distance and abundance
based pairwise dissimilarity of ant assemblage when using A) maixmum
surface travel distance and B) straight line distance between sampling
points. The pairwise dissimilarity (green points) is partitioned by
nestedness (yellow points) and turnover (blue points). Grey bands show
95% confidence interval. Solid line indicates significant relationship.
Dissimilarity close to one indicates that two assemblages are
dissimilar, while dissimilarity close to zero indicates that they are
similar.
Figure 5. Effects of horizontal (circle points) and vertical distance
(triangle points) on abundance based pairwise dissimilarity of ant
assemblage between transects and vertical strata. Pairwise dissimilarity
(green points) is partitioned by nestedness (yellow points) and turnover
(blue points). Grey bands show 95% confidence interval. Solid line
indicates significant relationship. Dissimilarity close to one indicates
that two assemblages are dissimilar, while dissimilarity close to zero
indicates that they are similar.
Figure 6. A) Relationship between vertical distance and pairwise
dissimilarity of ant assemblages within each transect. Different colors
of dot point and trend line indicate different transect. B) Relationship
between horizontal distance and pairwise dissimilarity of ant
assemblages within each vertical strata. Darker points and trend line
indicate higher vertical stratum. C) Boxplot showing the median and
interquartile ranges (IQR) of the estimated very small scale beta
diversity (model intercept) and distance effects (model coefficient) on
pairwise dissimilarity between sampling points within transect/stratum.
Model intercept and coefficients are from the linear regressions between
distance and assemblage dissimilarity within each horizontal transect
and vertical stratum (see Fig. S3 and Fig. S4). Whiskers incorporate
data that are 1.5 * IQR. Data beyond this are plotted individually.