Global phylogenetic and functional structure of rodent assemblages

Exploring the global patterns of phylogenetic and functional structure of assemblages is key to describe the distribution of biodiversity on Earth and to predict how communities and ecosystem functioning may be affected by anthropogenic pressures. Rodent communities have been studied in this regard in the past, but previous work largely focused on desert ecosystems. Here, we leveraged a large database of rodent range maps, functional traits, and phylogenetic trees to compute several metrics of functional and phylogenetic structure across > 10 000 rodent assemblages spanning all terrestrial biomes. We found that the vast majority of assemblages did not significantly differ from random association among species. Importantly, we show that the current patterns we observed can locally differ from past community structure, revealing the role humans have played in altering large‐scale biodiversity patterns. We also showed a strong scale‐dependence of our metrics and revealed a weak correlation between phylogenetic and functional structure, providing an additional line of evidence that they do not reflect the same processes of community assembly.