Local versus regional processes and the control of community structure

Márquez, Juan Carlos; Kolasa, Jurek; Sciullo, Luana

doi:10.1556/168.2016.17.1.1

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Membership in a local community is a consequence of colonization influenced by regional (stochastic) processes and deterministic abiotic and biotic filters that result in local extinction (Keddy , Marquez et al. , Ulrich et al. , Torok et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil heterogeneity increases plant diversity after 20 years of manipulation during grassland restoration

Baer

Adams

Scott

et al. 2019

Ecological Applications

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The “environmental heterogeneity hypothesis” predicts that variability in resources promotes species coexistence, but few experiments support this hypothesis in plant communities. A previous 15‐yr test of this hypothesis in a prairie restoration experiment demonstrated a weak effect of manipulated soil resource heterogeneity on plant diversity. This response was attributed to a transient increase in richness following a post‐restoration supplemental propagule addition, occasionally higher diversity under nutrient enrichment, and reduced cover of a dominant species in a subset of soil treatments. Here, we report community dynamics under continuous propagule addition in the same experiment, corresponding to 16–20 yr of restoration, in response to altered availability and heterogeneity of soil resources. We also quantified traits of newly added species to determine if heterogeneity increases the amount and variety of niches available for new species to exploit. The heterogeneous treatment contained a factorial combination of altered nutrient availability and soil depth; control plots had no manipulations. Total diversity and richness were higher in the heterogeneous treatment during this 5‐yr study due to higher cover, diversity, and richness of previously established forbs, particularly in the N‐enriched subplots. All new species added to the experiment exhibited unique trait spaces, but there was no evidence that heterogeneous plots contained a greater variety of new species representing a wider range of trait spaces relative to the control treatment. The richness and cover of new species was higher in N‐enriched soil, but the magnitude of this response was small. Communities assembling under long‐term N addition were dominated by different species among subplots receiving added N, leading to greater dispersion of communities among the heterogeneous relative to control plots. Contrary to the deterministic mechanism by which heterogeneity was expected to increase diversity (greater variability in resources for new species to exploit), higher diversity in the heterogeneous plots resulted from destabilization of formerly grass‐dominated communities in N‐enriched subplots. While we do not advocate increasing available soil N at large scales, we conclude that the positive effect of environmental heterogeneity on diversity can take decades to materialize and depend on development of stochastic processes in communities with strong establishment limitation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil heterogeneity increases plant diversity after 20 years of manipulation during grassland restoration

Baer

Adams

Scott

et al. 2019

Ecological Applications

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“…However, care should be taken when extrapolating the conclusions obtained from rock pools to larger aquatic systems, such as lakes (Srivastava et al., ). To improve predictions derived from the study of these systems, future research should also take into account the effects of biotic interactions, such as competition and predator pressure, priority effects and stochasticity (Castillo‐Escrivà, Valls, Rochera, Camacho, & Mesquita‐Joanes, ; Chase, ; Márquez, Kolasa, & Sciullo, ; Vanschoenwinkel et al., ) on rock‐pool metacommunities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and environmental effects on a rock‐pool metacommunity depend on landscape setting and dispersal mode

2017

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Empirical studies on structuring mechanisms of metacommunities usually focus on the major roles of environmental filtering and dispersal. Recent works suggest that the relative importance of these structuring mechanisms differs among organisms with different body size, taxonomic affiliation, and dispersal abilities, and also depends on spatial extent and environmental heterogeneity. However, the effects of physical connectivity among sites and dispersal mode are less commonly considered explicitly in field metacommunity studies. We analysed a rock‐pool animal metacommunity, comparing both environmental and spatial effects between a set of pools in a ravine setting, with ephemeral connecting waterways, and another in a hill setting, without such connections. We also analysed the relative role of structuring mechanisms influencing active versus passive dispersers in the metacommunity. We used permutational multivariate analysis of variance and analysis of the multivariate homogeneity of group dispersions to compare environmental and species variation between landscape settings. Variation partitioning was applied to determine the percentage of species variation explained by environmental and spatial variables. The relative influence of the structuring mechanisms depended on both the landscape connectivity context and species dispersal mode. Species sorting drove active‐disperser metacommunities in both isolated and waterway connected pools, suggesting that these animals had a dispersal rate among the environmentally suitable sites that was adequate to compensate for extinctions at the spatial scale we considered. In addition, beta diversity of active dispersers and species‐sorting effects were higher in the set of ravine rock pools that were more environmentally heterogeneous and connected by waterways. In contrast, species sorting structured passive‐disperser metacommunities only in the set of pools with connecting waterways, whereas spatial constraints more strongly affected passive dispersers in the relatively more isolated hillside pools. Overall, environmental variables had a greater effect than spatial variables on rock‐pool metacommunities at the scale we studied, with the exception that passive dispersers in rock pools unconnected by waterways did tend to have spatially constrained distributions.

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Helminth metacommunity of small mammals in a Brazilian reserve: the contribution of environmental variables, host attributes and spatial variables in parasite species abundance

et al. 2020

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The role of environmental factors and landscape heterogeneity on species distribution on different spatial scales is one of the most important questions in community ecology. Variations in the environmental gradient characteristics, host attributes and spatial scales may influence the parasites distribution. The helminth metacommunity of 12 small mammal species was investigated in an Atlantic Forest reserve located in the State of Rio de Janeiro, southeast Brazil. We evaluated the influence of environmental variables, host attributes and spatial factors on the helminth metacommunity of small mammals, considering infracommunity and component community levels. Twenty-nine helminth morphospecies were recovered. The host attributes and spatial variables influenced the abundance of helminth species in the metacommunities for rodents and marsupials together, and for rodents alone at the infracommunity level. Host body mass, host diet and spatial variables at broad spatial scale (among localities) were the most important variables to explain the variation in helminth abundance. Parasite species richness influenced this variation only for the marsupial helminth metacommunity at the infracommunity level. The metacommunity showed larger turnover (parasite replacement) than nestedness (parasite loss) for their helminth species at both infracommunity and component community levels, which is associated with a high host specificity, and low helminth sharing among hosts for most species, resulting in a structured metacommunity.

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Local versus regional processes and the control of community structure

Cited by 5 publications

References 40 publications

Soil heterogeneity increases plant diversity after 20 years of manipulation during grassland restoration

Soil heterogeneity increases plant diversity after 20 years of manipulation during grassland restoration

Spatial and environmental effects on a rock‐pool metacommunity depend on landscape setting and dispersal mode

Helminth metacommunity of small mammals in a Brazilian reserve: the contribution of environmental variables, host attributes and spatial variables in parasite species abundance

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