Habitat heterogeneity
By examining phylogenetic signal and community structure, one of our primary aims is to interpret the process driving rodent community construction. Under two-tailed t-test, most of phylogenetic and trait-based community structures in two rodent datasets exhibited random dispersion. Considering abiotic and biotic condition within artificially defined rodent community and the elevational pattern of community structure per se , we prefer to believe that multiple interactions between random and deterministic process in complex habitat have produced random rodent community structure.
    Extraordinary habitat heterogeneity in HMs has been frequently reported in previous empirical studies (Wen et al. 2016b; Lei et al. 2015; Lei et al. 2014). Besides, there is an indisputable fact that the amount of microhabitats is highly related to local biodiversity (Mehrabi et al. 2014). Within same area, a regional band with 100 meters range along elevational gradient (RED) should contains more microhabitats than that in local sampling transect (LSD). This inference was supported by the pattern of species richness which is highly related to environmental heterogeneity (Brown 2001). We found that rodent species richness of assemblages in RED was much higher than that in LSD. This should be one reason that phylogenetic and functional community structure of almost all assemblages in RED exhibited random dispersion and elevational pattern (except for SES.PWshape in RED) (further discussions to see in the following section).