Assemblage assessment partitioned by body size and lineages
Differences in body size may reflect divergences in species ecology and behaviour (Inward et al. 2011; Eberle et al. 2014; Lira et al. 2021). Thus, size related differences in assemblage composition across different spatial scales may provide insight to the causalities of these patterns. Therefore, assemblages were analysed according to these three body size groupings: 1) smaller 7 mm; 2) medium 7-15 mm; 3) larger 15 mm. The respective total body length was calculated using the sum of pronotal and elytral length (PL+EL). The mean total body length of a species was determined by taking the mean value of 3-5 individuals of the same species. Alternatively, assemblage composition analyses were partitioned according to phylogenetic lineages (following McKenna et al. 2021): Dynastinae, Rutelinae, Melolonthinae (excluding Sericini), and Sericini to explore also phylogenetic patterns of differences in assemblage composition (Smith et al. 2021).