Inconsistent response of taxonomic groups to space and environment in mediterranean and tropical pond metacommunities

Abstract

The metacommunity concept provides a theoretical framework that aims at explaining organism distributions by a combination of environmental filtering, dispersal, and drift. However, few works have attempted a multitaxon approach and even fewer have compared two distant biogeographical regions using the same methodology. We tested the expectation that temperate (mediterranean-climate) pond metacommunities would be more influenced by environmental and spatial processes than tropical ones, because of stronger environmental gradients and a greater isolation of waterbodies. However, the pattern should be different among groups of organisms depending on their dispersal abilities. We surveyed 30 tropical and 32 mediterranean temporary ponds from Costa Rica and Spain, respectively, and obtained data on 49 environmental variables. We characterized the biological communities of bacteria and archaea (from the water column and the sediments), phytoplankton, zooplankton, benthic invertebrates, amphibians and birds, and estimated the relative role of space and environment on metacommunity organization for each group and region, by means of variation partitioning using generalized additive models.Purely environmental effects were important in both tropical and mediterranean ponds, but stronger in the latter, probably due to their larger limnological heterogeneity. Spatially correlated environment and pure spatial effects were greater in the tropics, related to higher climatic heterogeneity and dispersal processes (e.g., restriction, surplus) acting at different scales. The variability between taxonomic groups in the contribution of spatial and environmental factors to metacommunity variation was very wide, but higher in active,

Higher alpha and gamma, but not beta diversity in tropical than in Mediterranean temporary ponds: A multi‐taxon spatiotemporal approach

“…We visited each pond three times during the same hydrological year: once in the early hydroperiod, that is, about 2 weeks after the infilling of the ponds (May 2017 in Costa Rica, January 2018 in Spain); once again in the middle of the hydroperiod (October 2017 in Costa Rica, April 2018 in Spain); and one last time by the end of the hydroperiod of temporary ponds, before their drying (January 2018 in Costa Rica, June 2018 in Spain). We characterized the environment of each surveyed pond in each period as described in Gálvez et al (2023) and Olmo et al (2022). This environmental characterization included limnological variables, such as major ion and nutrient concentrations, water transparency, temperature, pH, conductivity, and oxygen concentration; biotic variables such as vegetation architecture, chlorophyll a concentration, livestock use and presence of fish; hydrogeomorphological variables such as depth, diameter, area, morphology, proportions of organic and carbonate content in the sediment, altitude above sea level, hydroregime, origin of the water and granulometry of the sediment; landscape variables including proportions of land use type and landscape heterogeneity; and climatic variables.…”

“…These samples were fixed with 96% ethanol. Samples of phytoplankton, microinvertebrates, and macroinvertebrates were identified to species level whenever possible, following methods and references as in Gálvez et al (2023).…”

Understanding Ecological Complexity in a Chemical Stress Context: A Reflection on Recolonization, Recovery, and Adaptation of Aquatic Populations and Communities

“…The early new colonizers are expected to include species with traits supporting dispersal. According to metacommunity studies, these would include small passive dispersers (e.g., prokaryotic organisms, microscopic algae, microinvertebrates) and large active dispersers, especially those able to fly, like birds and insects (De Bie et al, 2012), with the exact processes being strongly context-dependent (Galvez et al, 2022). For instance, flying insects may take a few weeks or months to restore their populations (or replace others) through immigration and colonization of ponds after pesticide treatments (Caquet et al, 2007).…”

Explaining the anuran beta diversity by pond‐living tadpoles: the role of dispersal limitation and environmental gradients through multiple scales

“…Dalmolin et al, 2019) or multiple scales within the same biogeographical region (e.g. Loewen et al, 2020, but see Gálvez et al, 2023). More importantly, large‐scale studies are rarely conducted with a standardized design, which adds extra challenges to distinguishing the effects caused by differences in sampling design in beta diversity from real differences in compositional changes between sites affected by niche or neutral processes.…”

“…Bitar et al, 2017). Moreover, standardized protocols comparing multiple metacommunities across different biogeographic regions have been comparatively seldom performed (Gálvez et al, 2023; Siqueira et al, 2020). Studies using standardized sampling protocols were geographically restricted to a specific biome, with no studies on a macroecological scale using primary data.…”