Asymmetric responses of spatial variation of different communities to a salinity gradient in coastal wetlands

Li, Xiaoxiao; Yang, Wei; Li, Shanze; Sun, Tao; Bai, Junhong; Pei, Jun; Xie, Tian; Cui, Baoshan

doi:10.1016/j.marenvres.2020.105008

Cited by 17 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…High-salinity environments typically constrain the diversity of benthic organisms, resulting in only a few specialized organisms capable of surviving under these conditions [33]. In our study of high-salinity environments, we observed a significant reduction in species diversity, ultimately leaving only four orders.…”

Section: Mechanisms Of the Salinity Stress Response In Benthic Organismsmentioning

confidence: 51%

Ecology of Saline Watersheds: An Investigation of the Functional Communities and Drivers of Benthic Fauna in Typical Water Bodies of the Irtysh River Basin

Zi,

Wang,

Yang

et al. 2024

Biology

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In this study, we investigated how changes in salinity affect biodiversity and function in 11 typical water bodies in the Altai region. The salinity of the freshwater bodies ranged from 0 to 5, the brackish water salinities ranged from 5 to 20, and the hypersaline environments had salinities > 20. We identified 11 orders, 34 families, and 55 genera in 3061 benthic samples and classified them into 10 traits and 32 categories. Subsequently, we conducted Mantel tests and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and calculated biodiversity and functional diversity indices for each sampling site. The results indicated that biodiversity and the proportion of functional traits were greater in freshwater environments than in saline environments and decreased gradually with increasing salinity. Noticeable shifts in species distribution were observed in high-salinity environments and were accompanied by specific functional traits such as swimming ability, smaller body sizes, and air-breathing adaptations. The diversity indices revealed that the species were more evenly distributed in high-diversity environments under the influence of salinity. In contrast, in high-salinity environments, only a few species dominated. The results suggested that increasing salinity accelerated the evolution of benthic communities, leading to reduced species diversity and functional homogenization. We recommend enhancing the monitoring of saline water resources and implementing sustainable water resource management to mitigate the impact of salinity stress on aquatic communities in response to climate-induced soil and water salinization.

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Section: Mechanisms Of the Salinity Stress Response In Benthic Organismsmentioning

confidence: 51%

Ecology of Saline Watersheds: An Investigation of the Functional Communities and Drivers of Benthic Fauna in Typical Water Bodies of the Irtysh River Basin

Zi,

Wang,

Yang

et al. 2024

Biology

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“…This finding indicates that decreasing salinity seems to reduce the capability of benthic diatoms to maintain ecosystem resilience. This was surprising, because the diversity of many different aquatic organisms, including benthic diatoms, is often lowest in brackish salinities of 5–8 (Li et al, 2020; Olli et al, 2019; Remane, 1934; Virta et al, 2020). The diversity pattern in our study may have deviated from the hypothesized pattern because our highest salinity treatment (6) was approximately the same as the salinity to which the diatoms had been used in the sea.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Declining salinity and increasing temperature reduce the diversity and resilience of benthic diatoms

Virta,

Hedberg

2024

Environmental Microbiology

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Climate change will modify the marine ecosystem in several ways, but the effects of changing climate on benthic diatoms, which are one of the most important photosynthesizing organism groups in benthic habitats, are poorly studied. We conducted a mesocosm experiment to investigate the effects of increasing temperature and decreasing salinity on the taxonomic and functional diversity of benthic diatoms. We showed that decreasing salinity affects the taxonomic and functional composition of communities, and the threshold salinity for community composition is ~5. This indicates that when climate change leads to decreasing salinity in brackish systems, the most pronounced changes in communities occur in areas where salinity decreases from >5 to <5. We also showed that both increasing temperature and decreasing salinity exert stress on communities and, hence, lead to the decrease of the alpha and beta diversity of communities. This indicates that climate change reduces the size of the species pool of diatoms. Our results show that, along with the changing climate, we can expect benthic diatom communities to become less diverse and less resilient.

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“…Our study suggests that adopting plants' and consumers' perspectives may be particularly insightful for understanding variation in consumer control of plants when plants and consumers are uncoupled in distribution patterns or responses to abiotic stressors. Uncoupled distribution patterns or responses to abiotic stressors between plants and consumers may be particularly common in transitional coastal ecosystems, including salt marshes and seagrass beds, due to contrasting terrestrial and marine evolutionary roots, respectively (Hay & Fenical, 1988; Li et al., 2020). Importantly, rapid, anthropogenic environmental changes are decoupling the distribution patterns of plants and consumers in many ecosystems (Descombes et al., 2020; Hamann et al., 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where consumers control plant reproduction in coastal wetlands: The environmental stress model in plants' versus consumers' perspectives

Xu,

Ren,

Wang

et al. 2024

Journal of Ecology

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Understanding where consumers control plant reproduction in a time of changing plant–consumer interactions with environmental change can inform conservation. A seminal hypothesis—the environmental stress model (the ESM)—posits that consumer control of plants varies predictably with environmental stress. The ESM has been tested often along gradients of an abiotic stressor, yielding highly mixed support, although plants and consumers are often differently affected by a stressor. Here, to provide a conciliation, we introduced and tested a new ESM—the ESM in plants' versus consumers' perspectives. In field exclusion experiments conducted at three marsh sites that varied broadly in plant productivity, crab abundance and salinity within a coastal landscape, we tested the new ESM in predicting the impact of crab herbivores on the sexual reproduction of Phragmites australis. We analysed how their impact varied with plant productivity and crab abundance—proxies for environmental stresses in plants' and consumers' perspectives, respectively. We found that environmental stresses in plants' and consumers' perspectives were uncoupled across this coastal landscape. Neither crab abundance nor crab grazing intensity was correlated with plant productivity. Plant productivity and crab abundance were inconsistently related to key abiotic stressors including soil salinity. Depending on site, crab herbivores substantially suppressed Phragmites sexual reproductive effort (by >90%, by regulating a series of population‐ and individual‐level reproductive processes) or had little effect. Where crab herbivores had stronger impacts was not predicted by plant productivity, but largely by crab abundance via a threshold model. Above an abundance threshold, crabs increasingly suppressed Phragmites sexual reproductive effort. Synthesis. Our study revealed that consumer control of plant reproduction may be highly variable, even within a coastal landscape and for the same species, and that consumer abundance, rather than plant productivity, was a key predictor of this variation. As plants and consumers become increasingly uncoupled in many ecosystems under environmental change, the newly introduced ESM in plants' versus consumers' perspectives may be more versatile than previously recognized to inform conservation actions.

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Asymmetric responses of spatial variation of different communities to a salinity gradient in coastal wetlands

Cited by 17 publications

References 86 publications

Ecology of Saline Watersheds: An Investigation of the Functional Communities and Drivers of Benthic Fauna in Typical Water Bodies of the Irtysh River Basin

Ecology of Saline Watersheds: An Investigation of the Functional Communities and Drivers of Benthic Fauna in Typical Water Bodies of the Irtysh River Basin

Declining salinity and increasing temperature reduce the diversity and resilience of benthic diatoms

Where consumers control plant reproduction in coastal wetlands: The environmental stress model in plants' versus consumers' perspectives

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