Fig. 4: Ordered data used for metacommunity analyses.
Sites (rows) and species (columns) are ordered based on the similarity of community composition, i.e. the number of co-occurring species between sites, as determined by the first step of the metacommunity analyses calculated using reciprocal averaging based on community composition using the R package metacom63. The presence of a species is indicated by differently coloured squares which correspond to different time intervals: Tommotian 2 (T2; blue), Atdabanian 1 (A1; red) and Atdabanian 4 (A4; purple). Black squares are sites that do not fit into our T2, A1 and A4 groups, because there are an insufficient number of sites to perform analyses within these time intervals. The least ecologically complex metacommunity (Gleasonian) is indicated by the pale blue background shading, the most complex (Clementsian) by the red-purple background and intermediate complexity (quasi-Clementsian) by the pale red background. The pattern within each of these blocks, rather than patterns within each site (rows), indicates the degree of complexity.
