Relating the magnitude that trait hierarchy effects outcompete
trait dissimilarity effects to the abundance of focal species
We measured the magnitude that trait hierarchy effects outcompete trait
dissimilarity effects (MHD) by the differences in the absolute values of
coefficients of hierarchical trait distances and absolute trait
distances in the full model in equation (2) for different functional
traits and for each focal species. If trait hierarchy had stronger
effects than trait dissimilarity, MHD is supposed to be significantly
larger than 0; If trait dissimilarity had stronger effects than trait
hierarchy, MHD is expected to be smaller than 0. We then assessed the
relationship between MHD and the abundance of each focal species to
explore how the effects of different mechanisms vary among species with
different abundance.