Introduction
Temporal changes in community composition are a facet of biodiversity
change and are referred to as temporal beta diversity (Hatosy et al.,
2013; Baselga, Bonthoux, & Balent, 2015; Legendre, 2019). Recently, the
focus of temporal beta-diversity studies has expanded to multiple sites
and a large spatial scale, that is, to macroecological contexts (Brice,
Cazelles, Legendre, & Fortin, 2019; Gotelli et al., 2022).
Macroecological patterns of temporal beta diversity have gained
increasing attention during the ongoing biodiversity crisis resulting
from various anthropogenic disturbances and climate change impacts
(Dornelas et al., 2014; Brice et al., 2019; Magurran, Dornelas, Moyes,
& Henderson, 2019). Although the use of beta-diversity indices in
temporal beta-diversity studies is generally identical to that in
spatial beta-diversity studies, no one has seriously studied how
temporal beta diversity differs from spatial beta diversity. Therefore,
so far, temporal beta-diversity studies have been conducted based on
various uncertain assumptions dependent on spatial knowledge. This lack
of basic knowledge about temporal beta diversity could lead to
inaccurate assessments of biodiversity changes. Thus, revealing the
basic properties of temporal beta-diversity patterns is an urgent issue.
The unified neutral theory proposed by Hubbell (2001) demonstrated that
various types of common biodiversity patterns (e.g. species abundance
distribution) are reproduced under both ecological neutrality and
zero-sum assumptions (Rosindell, Hubbell, & Etienne, 2011; Shinohara,
Nakadai, Suzuki, & Terui, 2023). The neutral model would provide
valuable base knowledge under the simplest conditions as a starting
point (Rosindell et al. 2011; Rosindell, Hubbell, He, Harmon, &
Etienne, 2012; Takeuchi, Ohtsuki, & Innan, 2022). The dynamics under a
neutral model (i.e. neutral dynamics) would provide basic knowledge
regarding temporal beta-diversity studies just as they have provided so
far for other biodiversity patterns. Rosindell et al. (2011) argued that
studying dynamics under a neutral model is a future challenge. Several
previous studies (Dornelas et al., 2014; Sgardeli, Zografou, & Halley,
2016) related to temporal beta diversity have used predictions under
neutral dynamics as a baseline to quantify targeted factors (i.e.
climate change impacts). However, the effect of each parameter on the
general temporal beta-diversity pattern under neutral dynamics remains
unexplored. The present study aimed to reveal the basic properties of
temporal beta-diversity patterns under neutral dynamics and identify
their differences from those of spatial beta-diversity patterns.
Specifically, the parameter dependency of four variables, viz.,
fundamental biodiversity number, local community size, mortality rate,
and immigration rate, were examined.