Seasonal changes in metacommunity assembly mechanisms of benthic macroinvertebrates in a subtropical river basin

Li, Zhengfei; Yuan, Xiaohui; Liu, Zhenyuan; Xiao, Chen; Jiang, Xuan-Kong; Xie, Zhicai; Heino, Jani

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139046

Cited by 33 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…For instance, body shape and breathing apparatus are often associated with flow velocity and water oxygenation levels, two important components of microbial activity regulating stream‐wide processes such as nutrient cycling (Calapez et al., 2018; Dolédec et al., 2011). The developmental pace of individuals influences their tolerance to stressors (Dolédec et al., 2011) and their mobility moderates the linkage between habitats and the recovery of communities following stressor application (Guzman et al., 2019; Li et al., 2020; Schäfer et al., 2017). Finally, feeding habits directly link to the metabolic and stoichiometric resources needed by the individuals and thus to the dominant productivity pathways operating in a given stream such as primary or secondary productivity (Cummins, 2016; Frainer et al., 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of multiple anthropogenic stressors on stream macroinvertebrate community composition and functional diversity

Juvigny‐Khenafou

Piggott

Atkinson

et al. 2020

Ecology and Evolution

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of multiple anthropogenic stressors on stream macroinvertebrate community composition and functional diversity

Juvigny‐Khenafou

Piggott

Atkinson

et al. 2020

Ecology and Evolution

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“…We included only summer months, i.e. June, July and August, to eliminate seasonal effects on community compositions and assembly processes, which can make interpretations more complex (Li et al 2020). We then selected taxa identified at the species level for diatoms (444 species) and fish (93 species), and at species or genus levels for macroinvertebrates (429 taxa).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dispersal–niche continuum index: a new quantitative metric for assessing the relative importance of dispersal versus niche processes in community assembly

et al. 2020

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Patterns in community composition are scale‐dependent and generally difficult to distinguish. Therefore, quantifying the main assembly processes in various systems and across different datasets has remained challenging. Building on the PER‐SIMPER method, we propose a new metric, the dispersal–niche continuum index (DNCI), which estimates whether dispersal or niche processes dominate community assembly and facilitates the comparisons of processes among datasets. The DNCI was tested for robustness using simulations and applied to observational datasets comprising organismal groups with different trophic level and dispersal potential. Based on the robustness tests, the DNCI discriminated the respective contribution of niche and dispersal processes in pairwise comparisons of site groups with less than 40% and 30% differences in their taxa and site numbers, respectively. In the observational datasets, the DNCI suggested that dispersal rather than niche assembly was the dominant assembly process which, however, varied in intensity among organismal groups and study contexts, including spatial scale and ecosystem types. The proposed DNCI measures the relative strength of community assembly processes in a way that is simple, easily quantifiable and comparable across datasets. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the DNCI and provide perspectives for future research.

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“…The above conclusions indicated that biological communities are not at equipoise, but are on the short-term course of advancing it, and are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of the processes that determine community organization over extended timescales (Chang & HilleRisLambers, 2016), from years to decades (Alexander et al, 2012;Helsen et al, 2013). Besides, most previous studies based on snapshot sampling design, which may misrepresent the relative contribution of particular community-building processes, because they surmised that the mechanism regulating community variation remains constant over time (Li et al, 2020). Consequently, separating the temporal changes of these core processes will present more specific knowledge to better understand the community assembly mechanisms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

The joint contributions of environmental filtering and spatial processes to macroinvertebrate metacommunity dynamics in the alpine stream environment of Baima Snow Mountain, Southwest China

Farooq

et al. 2021

Preprint

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As a rapidly growing field of community ecology, the study of meta-communities provides an effective framework to unravel community assembly mechanisms by focusing on the relative contributions of environmental screening and spatial processes. While macroinvertebrates have been extensively investigated in many river ecosystems, meta-community ecology perspectives in high mountain stream networks are very limited. In this study, we assessed the role of ecological determinants and temporal dynamics in the macroinvertebrate meta-community assembly of an alpine stream situated in a dry-hot valley of Baima Snow Mountain, Northwest Yunnan. Our results show significant differences in the macroinvertebrate community composition across time periods. Spatial structuring and environmental filtering jointly drive the configuration of macroinvertebrate meta-community, with relative contributions to the variance in community composition varying over time. Redundancy Analysis (RDA) and variation partitioning indicate that environmental variables are the most important predictors of community organization in most scenarios, whereas spatial determinants also play a significant role. Moreover, the explanatory power, identity, and the relative significance of ecological indicators change over time. Particularly, in the years 2018 and 2019, stronger environmental filtering was found shaping community assembly, suggesting that deterministic mechanisms predominated in driving community dynamics in such a specific environment of the stream. However, spatial factors had a stronger predictive power on meta-community structures in 2017, implying conspicuous dispersal mechanisms which may be owing to increased connectivity amongst locations. Thereby, we inferred that the stream macroinvertebrate metacommunity composition can be regulated by the interaction of both spatial processes and environmental filtering, with relative contributions varying over time. Based on these findings, we suggest that community ecology studies in aquatic systems should be designed beyond single snapshot investigations.

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Seasonal changes in metacommunity assembly mechanisms of benthic macroinvertebrates in a subtropical river basin

Cited by 33 publications

References 70 publications

Impacts of multiple anthropogenic stressors on stream macroinvertebrate community composition and functional diversity

Impacts of multiple anthropogenic stressors on stream macroinvertebrate community composition and functional diversity

Dispersal–niche continuum index: a new quantitative metric for assessing the relative importance of dispersal versus niche processes in community assembly

The joint contributions of environmental filtering and spatial processes to macroinvertebrate metacommunity dynamics in the alpine stream environment of Baima Snow Mountain, Southwest China

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