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.