One of the primary challenges in predicting and assessing biodiversity is the complexity introduced by habitat heterogeneity. Further complicating the issue is the unresolved question regarding the detection and description of ecotones, and the abruptness of community turnover associated with those ecotones. Here we propose a method by which habitat heterogeneity can be assessed, and the scales at which ecotones impact communities can be estimated using community samples, based on an arthropod community data set collected from an apparently homogeneous environment. Community analyses however using an ordination technique (NMDS), and species accumulation functions indicate that the community is responsive to variation in the habitat that is not readily apparent on the ground, through variations in community composition, as well as nested secondary signals imbedded within species accumulation functions suggest their presence. Using these approaches, we propose to use the community composition to determine the scales at which habitat heterogeneity impacts arthropod communities, and explore the mechanisms that those scales suggest.