Niche breadth and biodiversity change derived from marine Amphipoda species off Iceland

Abstract

Understanding the ecological requirements and thresholds of individual species is crucial to better predict potential outcomes of climate change on species distribution. In particular, species optima and lower and upper limits along resource gradients require attention. Based on Huisman‐Olff‐Fresco (HOF) models, we determined species‐specific responses along gradients of nine environmental parameters including depth in order to estimate niche attributes of 30 deep‐sea benthic amphipods occurring around Iceland. We, furthermore, examined the relationships between niche breadth, occupancy, and geographic range assuming that species with a wider niche are spatially more widely dispersed and vice versa. Overall, our results reveal that species react very differently to environmental gradients, which is independent of the family affiliation of the respective species. We could infer a strong relationship between occupancy and geographic range and also relate this to differences in niche breadth; that is specialist species with a narrow niche had a more limited distribution and may thus be more threatened by changing environmental conditions than generalist species, which are more widespread. Given the preponderance of rare species in the deep sea, this implies that many species could be at risk. However, this must be carefully weighed against geographical data gaps in this area, given that many deep‐sea areas are severely undersampled and the true distribution of most species is unknown. After all, our results underline that an accurate taxonomic classification is of crucial importance, without which ecological niche properties cannot be determined and which is hence fundamental for the assessment and understanding of changes in biodiversity in the face of increasing human perturbations.

Shining a light on species coexistence: visual traits drive bumblebee communities

“…HOF models include a hierarchical set of response models of increasing complexity (model I: constant, no trend; model II: sigmoid trend with maximum equal to the upper bond; model III: sigmoid with maximum below the upper bound; model IV: unimodal symmetrical response; model V: unimodal skewed response; model VI: bimodal symmetric response and model VII: bimodal skewed response) [ 53 , 54 ]. We excluded the bimodal response models that are not expected along different light intensities and might result from outliers [ 55 ]. We bootstrapped models 1000 times and selected the most parsimonious model based on AICc [ 48 ].…”

Niche and interspecific association with respect to the dominant phytoplankton species in different hydrological periods of Lake Wuchang, China

“…The niche width represents the ability of aquatic life to use and adapt to the environmental resources of the aquatic ecosystem (Lörz et al, 2022). Therefore, these species with significant differences in the niche breadth are usually defined as widespread or generalized specie, and conversely as specialized species.…”

A new deep-sea species of Halirages Boeck, 1871 (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Calliopiidae) inhabiting sponges

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