Conclusions
By combining prior theoretical efforts (Kraft & Ackerly 2010; Kraftet al. 2007; Cavender-Bares et al. 2004; Webb et al. 2002) and the thought of distinct contributions displayed by traits (predominant and assistant traits), we proposed a novel framework to understand community assembly. Relying on phylogenetic relatedness acts as an aggregate of interspecific niche dissimilarity, the phylogenetic dispersion in simple habitat deserve to be predictable by assessing the functional dispersion of predominant traits. However, phylogenetic and functional dispersion within complex habitat becomes extremely complicated, which highly depends on the variations in trait role, trait conservatism and habitat heterogeneity.
    With two datasets of rodents in the HMs, we presented a case study to reveal the dominant ecological process assembling community. Resulting from multiple interactions between stochastic and deterministic processes in heterogeneous habitat, most of rodent assemblages exhibited phylogenetic and functional random, which has prevented us to estimate the functional roles of morphological traits. Due to higher level of habitat heterogeneity and enlarged community components, phylogenetic and morphological structure of rodent community at regional scale exhibited random pattern along elevational gradient and performed weak dependence on environmental variables. Despite of a series of inevitable deficiencies, this work has improved our mechanistic understanding on community assembly.