Body size and dispersal mode as key traits determining metacommunity structure of aquatic organisms

Bie, Tom De; Meester, Luc De; Brendonck, Luc; Martens, Koenraad; Goddeeris, Boudewijn; Ercken, Dirk; Hampel, Henrietta; Denys, Luc; Vanhecke, Léo; Gucht, Katleen Van der; Wichelen, Jeroen Van; Vyverman, Wim; Declerck, Steven

doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01794.x

Cited by 564 publications

(381 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…We used a spatial modeling technique that has been commonly applied to infer scales of spatial structures in terrestrial (e.g., Lindo and Winchester 2009, Lu et al 2011, Duarte et al 2012 and aquatic (e.g., Landeiro et al 2011, De Bie et al 2012, Heino et al 2012 environments. We used this technique to identify the number of spatial scales in a headwater stream network, based on the distribution and abundances of invertebrates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying spatial scaling patterns and their local and regional correlates in headwater streams: implications for resilience

Göthe¹,

Sandin²,

Allen³

et al. 2014

E&S

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ABSTRACT. The distribution of functional traits within and across spatiotemporal scales has been used to quantify and infer the relative resilience across ecosystems. We use explicit spatial modeling to evaluate within-and cross-scale redundancy in headwater streams, an ecosystem type with a hierarchical and dendritic network structure. We assessed the cross-scale distribution of functional feeding groups of benthic invertebrates in Swedish headwater streams during two seasons. We evaluated functional metrics, i.e., Shannon diversity, richness, and evenness, and the degree of redundancy within and across modeled spatial scales for individual feeding groups. We also estimated the correlates of environmental versus spatial factors of both functional composition and the taxonomic composition of functional groups for each spatial scale identified. Measures of functional diversity and within-scale redundancy of functions were similar during both seasons, but both within-and cross-scale redundancy were low. This apparent low redundancy was partly attributable to a few dominant taxa explaining the spatial models. However, rare taxa with stochastic spatial distributions might provide additional information and should therefore be considered explicitly for complementing future resilience assessments. Otherwise, resilience may be underestimated. Finally, both environmental and spatial factors correlated with the scale-specific functional and taxonomic composition. This finding suggests that resilience in stream networks emerges as a function of not only local conditions but also regional factors such as habitat connectivity and invertebrate dispersal.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying spatial scaling patterns and their local and regional correlates in headwater streams: implications for resilience

Göthe¹,

Sandin²,

Allen³

et al. 2014

E&S

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“…2007; De Bie et al. 2012). First (H 1 ), we assumed that the distributions of small organisms are more stochastic than those of large organisms (Soininen et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2013), and metacommunities of small organisms should thus be more likely to exhibit randomness than those of large organisms, although opposite interpretations have also been suggested (De Bie et al. 2012). Second (H 2 ), we hypothesized that metacommunity type should be related to the ecosystem type.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comparative analysis of metacommunity types in the freshwater realm

Heino

Soininen

Alahuhta

et al. 2015

Ecology and Evolution

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Most metacommunity studies have taken a direct mechanistic approach, aiming to model the effects of local and regional processes on local communities within a metacommunity. An alternative approach is to focus on emergent patterns at the metacommunity level through applying the elements of metacommunity structure (EMS; Oikos, 97, 2002, 237) analysis. The EMS approach has very rarely been applied in the context of a comparative analysis of metacommunity types of main microbial, plant, and animal groups. Furthermore, to our knowledge, no study has associated metacommunity types with their potential ecological correlates in the freshwater realm. We assembled data for 45 freshwater metacommunities, incorporating biologically highly disparate organismal groups (i.e., bacteria, algae, macrophytes, invertebrates, and fish). We first examined ecological correlates (e.g., matrix properties, beta diversity, and average characteristics of a metacommunity, including body size, trophic group, ecosystem type, life form, and dispersal mode) of the three elements of metacommunity structure (i.e., coherence, turnover, and boundary clumping). Second, based on those three elements, we determined which metacommunity types prevailed in freshwater systems and which ecological correlates best discriminated among the observed metacommunity types. We found that the three elements of metacommunity structure were not strongly related to the ecological correlates, except that turnover was positively related to beta diversity. We observed six metacommunity types. The most common were Clementsian and quasi-nested metacommunity types, whereas Random, quasi-Clementsian, Gleasonian, and quasi-Gleasonian types were less common. These six metacommunity types were best discriminated by beta diversity and the first axis of metacommunity ecological traits, ranging from metacommunities of producer organisms occurring in streams to those of large predatory organisms occurring in lakes. Our results showed that focusing on the emergent properties of multiple metacommunities provides information additional to that obtained in studies examining variation in local community structure within a metacommunity.

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“…Most of our knowledge about DDS of various organisms is derived from meta-analyses (Nekola and White, 1999;Soininen et al, 2007;Hanson et al, 2012) that comprise studies with different sampling grain and geographic scale, which may strongly bias the understanding of DDS relationships (Steinbauer et al, 2012). Thus simultaneous analyses of DDS in organisms with different dispersal traits (owing to their varying size and active vs passive motility) are needed for better understanding the relative contribution of deterministic and neutral processes (Soininen et al, 2007;Hájek et al, 2011;Bie et al, 2012). Small-scale studies are subject to fewer confounding factors such as climate, soil type, random environmental fluctuations and history and thus provide a good basis to determine neutral stochasticity (drift and dispersal limitation per se; Vellend et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stochastic distribution of small soil eukaryotes resulting from high dispersal and drift in a local environment

et al. 2015

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A central challenge in ecology is to understand the relative importance of processes that shape diversity patterns. Compared with aboveground biota, little is known about spatial patterns and processes in soil organisms. Here we examine the spatial structure of communities of small soil eukaryotes to elucidate the underlying stochastic and deterministic processes in the absence of environmental gradients at a local scale. Specifically, we focus on the fine-scale spatial autocorrelation of prominent taxonomic and functional groups of eukaryotic microbes. We collected 123 soil samples in a nested design at distances ranging from 0.01 to 64 m from three boreal forest sites and used 454 pyrosequencing analysis of Internal Transcribed Spacer for detecting Operational Taxonomic Units of major eukaryotic groups simultaneously. Among the main taxonomic groups, we found significant but weak spatial variability only in the communities of Fungi and Rhizaria. Within Fungi, ectomycorrhizas and pathogens exhibited stronger spatial structure compared with saprotrophs and corresponded to vegetation. For the groups with significant spatial structure, autocorrelation occurred at a very fine scale (o2 m). Both dispersal limitation and environmental selection had a weak effect on communities as reflected in negative or null deviation of communities, which was also supported by multivariate analysis, that is, environment, spatial processes and their shared effects explained on average o10% of variance. Taken together, these results indicate a random distribution of soil eukaryotes with respect to space and environment in the absence of environmental gradients at the local scale, reflecting the dominant role of drift and homogenizing dispersal.

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Body size and dispersal mode as key traits determining metacommunity structure of aquatic organisms

Cited by 564 publications

References 51 publications

Quantifying spatial scaling patterns and their local and regional correlates in headwater streams: implications for resilience

Quantifying spatial scaling patterns and their local and regional correlates in headwater streams: implications for resilience

A comparative analysis of metacommunity types in the freshwater realm

Stochastic distribution of small soil eukaryotes resulting from high dispersal and drift in a local environment

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