Spatially structured environmental filtering of collembolan traits in late successional salt marsh vegetation

Widenfalk, Lina Ahlbäck; Bengtsson, Jan; Berggren, Åsa; Zwiggelaar, Krista; Spijkman, Evelien; Huyer-Brugman, F; Berg, M.P.

doi:10.1007/s00442-015-3345-z

Cited by 64 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…), with communities being assembled of species with similar traits (Mayfield and Levine , Widenfalk et al. ). In the case of disturbed habitats, such species are usually r‐strategists and invasive species with a broad trophic niche (Gehring and Swihart , Swihart et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collapse of trophic‐niche structure in belowground communities under anthropogenic disturbance

et al. 2018

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The niche concept is a central paradigm in ecology, but empirical evidence on how the niche structure of belowground communities is affected by ecosystem disturbance is lacking. Niche differentiation evolves due to stable coexistence of species in a community, suggesting that in unstable communities, the niches of species should largely overlap. Here, we test this prediction using empirical data on the trophic‐niche structure of several belowground collembolan communities of natural (forest and meadow) and disturbed (pasture and urban lawn) habitats. Scaled stable isotope compositions of carbon and nitrogen were used to reveal the trophic specialization of species. In full agreement with the theoretical predictions, trophic‐niche structure collapsed in disturbed habitats, which was illustrated by decreased interspecific and increased intraspecific variation in the stable isotope compositions. In stable natural habitats, different trophic niches are occupied by different collembolan species, but in disturbed habitats, poor niche specialization is partly compensated for by intraspecific trophic flexibility. The simplification of food‐web structure was in line with the evidence coming from disturbed aquatic ecosystems, suggesting that the collapse of trophic‐niche structure may be a common feature of disturbed communities across biomes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collapse of trophic‐niche structure in belowground communities under anthropogenic disturbance

et al. 2018

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“…org , BIEN;  http://bien.nceas.ucsb.edu/bien ) allows us to now study how multiple traits respond to environmental gradients and how they influence ecosystem functioning. However, current approaches are so far limited to estimating statistical relationships of such CWMs along environmental gradients independently for multiple traits (Bernard-Verdier et al 2012, Widenfalk et al 2015. While appealing, this practice can be problematic given that traits are not independent of each other but rather exhibit functional relationships (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating correlation between traits improves spatial predictions of plant functional composition

Wüest

Münkemüller

Lavergne

et al. 2017

Oikos

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Functional trait composition is increasingly recognized as key to better understand and predict community responses to environmental gradients. Predictive approaches traditionally model the weighted mean trait values of communities (CWMs) as a function of environmental gradients. However, most approaches treat traits as independent regardless of known tradeoffs between them, which could lead to spurious predictions. To address this issue, we suggest jointly modeling a suit of functional traits along environmental gradients while accounting for relationships between traits. We use generalized additive mixed effect models to predict the functional composition of alpine grasslands in the Guisane Valley (France). We demonstrate that, compared to traditional approaches, joint trait models explain considerable amounts of variation in CWMs, yield less uncertainty in trait CWM predictions and provide more realistic spatial projections when extrapolating to novel environmental conditions. Modeling traits and their co‐variation jointly is an alternative and superior approach to predicting traits independently. Additionally, compared to a ‘predict first, assemble later’ approach that estimates trait CWMs post hoc based on stacked species distribution models, our ‘assemble first, predict later’ approach directly models trait‐responses along environmental gradients, and does not require data and models on species’ distributions, but only mean functional trait values per community plot. This highlights the great potential of joint trait modeling approaches in large‐scale mapping applications, such as spatial projections of the functional composition of vegetation and associated ecosystem services as a response to contemporary global change.

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“…For instance, physiological traits underpinning desiccation resistance explained species distribution patterns of terrestrial isopods in relation to water availability across Hungary (Dias et al, 2013). Traits related to life-form and the vertical structuring of communities in soils can be used to predict the responses of springtails (Collembola) to environmental changes (Krab et al, 2010;Makkonen et al, 2011;Widenfalk et al, 2015). Moreover, traits related to moisture conditions can be important drivers of community composition of land snails on islands (Astor et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Importance of environmental and spatial components for species and trait composition in terrestrial snail communities

Astor

Proschwitz

Strengbom

et al. 2017

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Despite the huge diversity of soil animals and their recognized contribution to many ecosystem functions, little is known about the relative importance of factors controlling their abundance and distribution. We examined the relative importance of environmental and spatial factors in explaining the species and functional trait composition of terrestrial snail communities at the level of meta‐communities (spatial extent c. 100 × 100 km) in a heterogeneous, intensively used landscape. We hypothesized that both spatial and environmental factors contribute to the variation in community structure across the landscape, but expected environmental variables describing local habitat conditions to be most important. Location County of Skåne, south Sweden. Methods We quantified community structure in terms of species composition and as functional trait composition, because functional traits directly link species performance to environmental conditions. To disentangle the unique and shared contribution of environmental and spatial factors to the variation in snail community structure (in terms of species and trait composition) we applied a partial redundancy analysis. Results Species traits explained more of the variance in community composition than species identity. Snail traits such as tolerance to environmental stress (related to soil moisture content) and niche width were correlated with the main environmental gradient. Environmental variables (i.e. soil moisture content, vegetation characteristics and soil pH) contributed considerably more to variation in community composition (species: 11.4%; traits: 24.9%) than the spatial variables (species: 6.5%; traits: 4.2%). Main conclusions The results highlight that both environmental and spatial variables are required to understand the relative importance of niche‐based and intrinsic population processes as drivers of terrestrial snail community structure. However, at the scale of our study niche‐based community structuring explained by the trait–environment relationship is considerably more important than spatial patterning independent of the environment.

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Spatially structured environmental filtering of collembolan traits in late successional salt marsh vegetation

Cited by 64 publications

References 80 publications

Collapse of trophic‐niche structure in belowground communities under anthropogenic disturbance

Collapse of trophic‐niche structure in belowground communities under anthropogenic disturbance

Integrating correlation between traits improves spatial predictions of plant functional composition

Importance of environmental and spatial components for species and trait composition in terrestrial snail communities

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