Abstract:Abstract:The study of co-occurrence patterns has been extensively applied to propose assembly rules for community organization. Recently, a new interest has grown in the effect of gradients on these patterns and to analyze them through new approximations such as co-occurrence networks, through which keystone species can be identified. Neotropical floodplains represent interesting systems to study such patterns, because of their spatial heterogeneity, temporal variability and their high fish species richness. W… Show more
“…Evidence for co‐occurrence between L. striatus and L. octomaculatus was weaker. These results contribute to the small‐but‐growing body of literature describing positive co‐occurrence patterns among freshwater vertebrates (Echevarría & Rodríguez, ; Peoples & Frimpong, ) and are the first in a tropical system.…”
Understanding the relative importance of abiotic factors and biotic interactions in determining species co‐occurrence is a fundamental goal in ecology. Most studies of ecology of freshwater fishes have focused on negative biotic interactions (competition and predation), and much less is known about more positive interactions. The goal of this study was to quantify the relative importance of habitat features and biotic interactions (positive and negative) on co‐occurrence of three pairs of feeding‐associative Leporinus (L.) fishes in rivers of central Brazil (L. friderici–L. octomaculatus, L. striatus–L. octomaculatus, L. friderici–L. striatus).
We sampled 146 sites on two rivers of central Brazil and used two‐species occupancy models to examine the relative importance of habitat features and commensalistic feeding association for determining co‐occurrence of the three species pairs. Using an information–theoretic framework, we compared weight‐of‐evidence for models containing effects of habitat covariates only, biotic interactions only, and their combination.
Model evidence supported the hypothesis that feeding activity of L. friderici facilitates occurrence of L. octomaculatus and that the interaction is mediated by habitat covariates. In contrast, most evidence suggested that occurrence of L. striatus is independent of L. friderici, and is instead determined entirely by habitat features. Evidence for facilitation of L. octomaculatus by L. striatus was mixed—there is evidence supporting the habitat‐only hypothesis as well as habitat‐mediated facilitation.
Our results suggest that positive interactions can affect co‐occurrence among freshwater fishes, at least for species that interact strongly. More facultative interactions, such as those between L. friderici and L. striatus, may be less important, at least in certain abiotic contexts. This study indicates that biotic interactions between species of freshwater fish can be evident beyond the microhabitat scale to positively influence species co‐occurrence and adds to evidence from other groups of freshwater organisms indicating the importance of biotic interactions in facilitating species co‐occurrence.
“…Evidence for co‐occurrence between L. striatus and L. octomaculatus was weaker. These results contribute to the small‐but‐growing body of literature describing positive co‐occurrence patterns among freshwater vertebrates (Echevarría & Rodríguez, ; Peoples & Frimpong, ) and are the first in a tropical system.…”
Understanding the relative importance of abiotic factors and biotic interactions in determining species co‐occurrence is a fundamental goal in ecology. Most studies of ecology of freshwater fishes have focused on negative biotic interactions (competition and predation), and much less is known about more positive interactions. The goal of this study was to quantify the relative importance of habitat features and biotic interactions (positive and negative) on co‐occurrence of three pairs of feeding‐associative Leporinus (L.) fishes in rivers of central Brazil (L. friderici–L. octomaculatus, L. striatus–L. octomaculatus, L. friderici–L. striatus).
We sampled 146 sites on two rivers of central Brazil and used two‐species occupancy models to examine the relative importance of habitat features and commensalistic feeding association for determining co‐occurrence of the three species pairs. Using an information–theoretic framework, we compared weight‐of‐evidence for models containing effects of habitat covariates only, biotic interactions only, and their combination.
Model evidence supported the hypothesis that feeding activity of L. friderici facilitates occurrence of L. octomaculatus and that the interaction is mediated by habitat covariates. In contrast, most evidence suggested that occurrence of L. striatus is independent of L. friderici, and is instead determined entirely by habitat features. Evidence for facilitation of L. octomaculatus by L. striatus was mixed—there is evidence supporting the habitat‐only hypothesis as well as habitat‐mediated facilitation.
Our results suggest that positive interactions can affect co‐occurrence among freshwater fishes, at least for species that interact strongly. More facultative interactions, such as those between L. friderici and L. striatus, may be less important, at least in certain abiotic contexts. This study indicates that biotic interactions between species of freshwater fish can be evident beyond the microhabitat scale to positively influence species co‐occurrence and adds to evidence from other groups of freshwater organisms indicating the importance of biotic interactions in facilitating species co‐occurrence.
“…This is because the correlation between two of these factors, say phylogenetic closeness and co-occurrence, might be influenced by their mutual correlation to a third factor, in this case morphological closeness. Our work therefore builds on and extends earlier network-based studies that explored similar questions [36][37][38], but only focused on one or two of these attributes. In the present work we attempt to identify possible interdependence among all three attributes using the complex network framework and continental-scale fish species phylogenetic, morphological and cooccurrence data.…”
The complex network framework has been successfully used to model interactions between entities in Complex Systems in the Biological Sciences such as Proteomics, Genomics, Neuroscience, and Ecology. Networks of organisms at different spatial scales and in different ecosystems have provided insights into community assembly patterns and emergent properties of ecological systems. In the present work, we investigate two questions pertaining to fish species assembly rules in US river basins, a) if morphologically similar fish species also tend to be phylogenetically closer, and b) to what extent are co-occurring species that are phylogenetically close also morphologically similar? For the first question, we construct a network of Hydrologic Unit Code 8 (HUC8) regions as nodes with interaction strengths (edges) governed by the number of common species. For each of the modules of this network, which are found to be geographically separated, there is differential yet significant evidence that phylogenetic distance predicts morphological distance. For the second question, we construct and analyze nearest neighbor directed networks of species based on their morphological distances and phylogenetic distances. Through module detection on these networks and comparing the module-level mean phylogenetic distance and mean morphological distance with the number of basins of common occurrence of species in modules, we find that both phylogeny and morphology of species have significant roles in governing species co-occurrence, i.e. phylogenetically and morphologically distant species tend to co-exist more. In addition, between the two quantities (morphological distance and phylogentic distance), we find that morphological distance is a stronger determinant of species co-occurrences.
“…Muchos estudios ecológicos de peces dulceacuícolas se han enfocado en las interacciones bióticas negativas (competición y depredación) existiendo un desconocimiento de las interacciones positivas entre especies ictiológicas de agua dulce (Arnhold et al, 2019). El estudio de los patrones de co-ocurrencia ha sido extensamente aplicado para proponer reglas de ensamblajes en la organización de las comunidades ícticas (Araújo et al, 2011;Pease et al, 2015;Blasina et al, 2016;Erős et al, 2016;Echevarría y Rodríguez, 2017).…”
La estructura de los ensamblajes de peces fluviales se ha relacionado con los factores abióticos y la recolonización dinámica, en lugar de considerar las interacciones bióticas como las de mayor importancia. Este trabajo se propuso determinar patrones de coexistencia entre las especies ictiológicas dulceacuícolas en los ríos del municipio Gibara, Holguín, Cuba. El índice del puntaje-C observado fue 0.732, mayor al simulado (0.6762). Los pares de especies que presentaron más unidades de co-ocurrencia (6) correspondieron a: Joturus pichardi con Awaous banana y Cubanichthys cubensis; Sicydium plumieri con Ciprinus carpio, Cyprinodon artifrons; Eleotris pisonis y Hypophthalmichthys nobilis. El índice observado de la razón de varianza fue igual a 3.8689 permitiendo determinar que existe una fuerte covarianza entre la composición de las especies con el número de sitios. Se obtuvo dos grandes grupos en el análisis de similitud a un 75 %, no presentando diferencias estadísticas. Las especies que más contribuyeron a la disimilitud entre ambos grupos fueron las especies del género Awaous, Girardinus denticulatus y S. plumieri.
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