Environmental filtering determines metacommunity structure in wetland microcrustaceans

Abstract

Metacommunity approaches are becoming popular when analyzing factors driving species distribution at the regional scale. However, until the popularization of the variation partitioning technique it was difficult to assess the main drivers of the observed patterns (spatial or environmental). Here we propose a new framework linking the emergence of different metacommunity structures (e.g., nested, Gleasonian, Clementsian) to spatial and environmental filters. This is a novel approach that provides a more profound analysis of how both drivers could lead to similar metacommunity structures. We tested this framework on 110 sites covering a strong environmental gradient (i.e., microcrustacean assemblages organized along a salinity gradient, from freshwater to brackish water wetlands). First we identified the metacommunity structure that better fitted these microcrustacean assemblages. Then, we used hierarchical variation partitioning to quantify the relative influences of environmental filters and the distance among wetlands on the identified structure. Our results showed that under strong environmental filtering metacommunity structures were non-random. We also noted that even passive dispersers, that are supposed to be poorly spatially filtered, showed spatial signals at a large geographical scale. However, some difficulties arose when inferring biotic interactions at finer-scale spatial signals. Overall, our study shows the potential of elements of metacommunity structure combined with variation partition techniques to detect environmental drivers and broadscale patterns of metacommunity structure, and that some caution is needed when interpreting finer-scale spatial signals.

Environmental drivers of species composition and functional diversity of dung beetles along the Atlantic Forest–Pampa transition zone

“…Therefore, our results strongly support the hypothesis of environmental filtering (Gascón et al . ), which promotes species and traits sorting.…”

Interpreting beta‐diversity components over time to conserve metacommunities in highly dynamic ecosystems

“…; Gascón et al. ), the metacommunity concept still lacks utilitarian relevance. We argue this may be because metacommunity research is increasing drastically (Logue et al.…”

“…linked by dispersal of multiple potentially interacting species" [Leibold et al 2004]) spurred abundant research on how dispersal, the local environment, and biotic interactions collectively influence community assembly across the landscape (Cottenie 2005;Bie et al 2012;Heino et al 2012). Whereas some studies show how nonrandom patterns of species distributions emerging from metacommunity dynamics have conservation implications (e.g., nested and Clementsian structures; Ruhí et al 2013;Tornés & Ruhí 2013;Datry et al 2014a;Gascón et al 2016), the metacommunity concept still lacks utilitarian relevance. We argue this may be because metacommunity research is increasing drastically (Logue et al 2011;Heino 2013;Heino et al 2015) but most studies still describe metacommunity snapshots that overlook temporal variation in metacommunity structure in response to environmental variation.…”

Damming interacts with the flood pulse to alter zooplankton communities in an Amazonian river

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