Mangroves are highly productive marine ecosystems where bacteria (culturable and non-culturable) actively participate in biomineralization of organic matter and biotransformation of minerals. This study explores spatial and seasonal fluctuations of culturable heterotrophic bacteria and Vibrio spp. in the sediments of an intact mangrove ecosystem and determines the dominant environmental factors that govern these fluctuations. Sediment samples were collected monthly from three stations in the mangroves of Laguna de Balandra, Baja California Sur, Mexico, through an annual cycle. Physicochemical parameters included seawater temperature, salinity, and concentration of dissolved oxygen. Viable counts of culturable heterotrophic bacteria and Vibrio spp. were made. In one sample (March 2003), nutrient concentrations (ammonium, nitrites, nitrates, and phosphates), organic matter, pH and sediment texture were also determined. General cluster analyses, analysis of variance of specific variables, and several principal component analyses demonstrated that seawater temperature is the principal determinant of seasonal distribution of culturable heterotrophic bacteria and Vibrio spp. in mangrove sediments. Soil texture, concentration of nutrients, and organic matter concentration contribute to heterogenicity to a lesser extent. A large spatial variation in bacterial populations was observed over short distances ( approximately 1 m) in sampling areas within the same site. These analyses show that the culturable bacterial distribution in sediments of mangroves has high spatial and temporal heterogeneity.

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Establishment, colonization, and permanence of plants affect biogenic and physical processes leading to development of soil. Rockiness, temperature, and humidity are accepted explanations to the influence and the presence of rock-dwelling plants, but the relationship between mineral and chemical composition of rocks with plant abundance is unknown in some regions. This study documents plant species growing on rocks, their capacity as rock colonizers measured by the Importance Index, and the relationships between the chemical composition of rocks and the abundance of the dominant plant. The community is composed of eight species and is dominated by the small cactus Mammillaria fraileana. Sites with low abundance of this species contain volcanic breccias, high amounts Ca, Fe, Mg, Ti, Al, and Mn as part of moderately weatherable minerals, such as plagioclase and pyroxene. Sites with higher abundance contain rhyodacite, rhyolite, and andesite rocks rich in more weatherable minerals, such as volcanic glass and minerals containing Si, K, and Na. K and Na were present in equal proportions only at the site with more plants. Since Na is toxic for most plants, an experiment was carried out to assess its effect on the survival of M. fraileana seedlings. Decreased survival occurred as the concentration of Na increased. Even in the treatment without Na, survival decreased slightly. In summary, presence and abundance of plants is related to the type of bedrock, their weathering characteristics, and proportion of elements. The interactions among elements, rather than the isolated effect of specific elements, could be the most reliable explanation for local variations in the abundance and dominance of Mammillaria fraileana in rocky habitat in the southern Sonoran Desert.

Anthropic activities impact ecosystems worldwide thus contributing to the rapid erosion of biodiversity. The failure of traditional strategies targeting single species highlighted ecosystems as the most suitable scale to plan biodiversity management. Network analysis represents an ideal tool to model interactions in ecosystems and centrality indices have been extensively applied to quantify the structural and functional importance of species in food webs. However, many network studies fail in deciphering the ecological mechanisms that lead some species to occupy the most central positions in food webs. To address this question, we built a high-resolution food web of the Gulf of California and quantified species position using 15 centrality indices and the trophic level. We then modelled the values of each index as a function of traits and other attributes (e.g., habitat). We found that body size and mobility are the best predictors of indices that characterize species importance at local, meso-and global scale, especially in presence of data accounting for energy direction. This result extends previous findings that illustrated how a restricted set of traitaxes can predict whether two species interact in food webs. In particular, we show that traits can also help understanding the way species are affected by and mediate indirect effects. The traits allow focusing on the processes that shape the food web, rather than providing case-specific indications as the taxonomy-based approach. We suggest that future network studies should consider the traits to explicitly identify the causal relationships that link anthropic impacts to role changes of species in food webs.

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