Effect of Disturbance Regime on Alpha and Beta Diversity of Rock Pools

Abstract

Measures of alpha diversity are more frequently used to detect environmental changes and subsequent impacts on biodiversity, while measures based on variability (beta diversity) are said to be more appropriate for detecting those impacts. Theory predicts that beta diversity should increase with disturbance frequency in patchy communities. Our objective in this study was to experimentally determine the effect of high and low disturbance regimes, frequency and intensity combined, on marine benthic alpha and beta diversity. The experiment was conducted in a rock pool system of the St. Lawrence estuary, Canada. Rock pools were disturbed by (1) nutrient enrichment and (2) draining according to three disturbance regimes (none, low, high). Disturbance regimes had little or no effect on alpha diversity of benthic algae and sessile animals. However, the low regime of nutrient enrichment induced greater within-group beta diversity than the reference rock pools, while the high disturbance regime induced equal or even smaller within-group beta diversity compared to the reference. Draining had an opposite effect on benthic beta diversity, with a greater variability of the community structure under the high regime of disturbance. Taking into account the effect of disturbance regimes on beta diversity could provide a useful diagnostic for disturbed benthic communities.

Seawater Acidification Affects Beta-Diversity of Benthic Communities at a Shallow Hydrothermal Vent in a Mediterranean Marine Protected Area (Underwater Archaeological Park of Baia, Naples, Italy)

“…In our study, PERMANOVA highlighted significant differences between the hydrothermal vents and the CN and CS sites, while PERMDISP did not show significant differences between small-scale heterogeneities (differences between same-site replicates) [14]. In classical BACI (Before and After Controls Impacts) studies [56] high small-scale heterogeneities are related to lowly disturbed areas since an impact often tends to homogenize community structures, lowering redundancy [57,58] and resilience capacity [18,59]. However, this is not always true since it may depend on what kind of species or taxa compose the assemblages.…”

Unravelling the joint effects of flow regime, climatic variability and dispersal mode on beta diversity of riverine communities

“…Although we found no significant change between climate phases in beta diversity among flow regimes, we did detect greater heterogeneity during the drought within each regime. Some previous studies have reported greater beta diversity of aquatic communities during drought or drying, associated with increased environmental heterogeneity (Séguin, Gravel & Archambault, ; Stubbington et al ., ). However, other research has found lower community variability during drying (Chase, ).…”

Multiple opportunistic pathogens can cause a bleaching disease in the red seaweed Delisea pulchra

“…, Supporting Information Table S3). In other ecological systems, increases in community divergence between individual samples have been correlated with disturbance to the natural community structure (O'Connor, , Séguin et al ., , Rubal et al ., ). For example, disturbance induced by draining rock pools resulted in increased within‐group dissimilarity in the communities of marine benthic algae and sessile animals inhabiting the pools (Séguin et al ., ).…”

“…In other ecological systems, increases in community divergence between individual samples have been correlated with disturbance to the natural community structure (O'Connor, , Séguin et al ., , Rubal et al ., ). For example, disturbance induced by draining rock pools resulted in increased within‐group dissimilarity in the communities of marine benthic algae and sessile animals inhabiting the pools (Séguin et al ., ). Increased phylogenetic divergence was also observed for the microbiome of the kelp Ecklonia radiata , where the characteristic ‘core’ community associated with healthy hosts was replaced with taxonomically diverse microbial communities following host stress (Marzinelli et al ., ).…”