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158 results for “Metacommunities”
Data from: Parasite metacommunities: evaluating the roles of host community composition and environmental gradients in structuring symbiont communities within amphibians
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Data from: Intraspecific and interspecific trait variability in tadpole metacommunities from the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest
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Data from: Dispersal and diversity in experimental metacommunities: linking theory and practice
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Data from: Consequences of swamp forest fragmentation on assemblages of vascular epiphytes and climbing plants: evaluation of the metacommunity structure
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Data from: A fresh approach reveals how dispersal shapes metacommunity structure in a human-altered landscape
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Data from: Chiropteran metacommunity structure in the Atlantic Forest of South America
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Data from: Host-parasitoid evolution in a metacommunity
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McMurdo Dry Valleys Simulations connecting metacommunity characteristics and biodiversity patterns
The data and model described here with the purpose of understanding controls over biodiversity. A multi-scale approach to understand how local and regional factors affect the community assembly processes that drive emergent patterns. These data allows us to examin a wide range of parameter settings representing ecologically relevant scenarios. We used artificial neural networks (ANNs) to assess the sensitivity of diversity and variation partitioning metrics (calculated from simulation outcomes) to metacommunity parameter settings. Here you will find metadata details,  dor detailed information about the simulations results and conclusions, please visit the associated publication at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/oik.03690/abstract;jsessionid...
Fig. 3 in Fish metacommunity structure in Caño Maraca, an important nursery habitat in the Western Llanos of Venezuela
Fig. 3. RDA ordination plot for species assemblages at three sites along the longitudinal gradient of Caño Maraca during dry and wet seasons. Arrows indicate gradients contrasting species with highest positive and negative loadings on each axis.
Fig. 1 in Fish metacommunity structure in Caño Maraca, an important nursery habitat in the Western Llanos of Venezuela
Fig. 1. Map showing location of Caño Maraca within the Orinoco River Basin in Venezuela and locations of three survey sites (triangles).
Fig. 2 in Fish metacommunity structure in Caño Maraca, an important nursery habitat in the Western Llanos of Venezuela
Fig. 2. Rarefaction curves with extrapolations for fish assemblages at two survey sites (circle- Puente, triangle- Estero) during dry and wet seasons and all periods combined (square- Naciente) (Hill's number order q= 0).
Data from: Beyond a single patch: local and regional processes explain diversity patterns in a seagrass epifaunal metacommunity
<p>Ecological communities are jointly structured by dispersal, density-independent responses to environmental conditions and density-dependent biotic interactions. Metacommunity ecology provides a framework for understanding how these processes combine to determine community seagrass meadows along the British Columbia coast, we tested the hypothesis that eelgrass (<i>Zostera marina</i> L.) epifaunal invertebrate assemblages are influenced by local environmental conditions, but that high dispersal rates at larger spatial scales dampen effects of environmental differences. We used hierarchical joint species distribution modelling to understand the contribution of environmental conditions, spatial distance between meadows, and species co-occurrences to epifaunal invertebrate abundance and distribution across the region. We found that patterns of taxonomic compositional similarity among meadows were inconsistent with dispersal limitation, and meadows in the same region were often no more similar to each other than meadows over 1000 km away. Abiotic environmental conditions (temperature, dissolved oxygen) explained a small fraction of variation in taxonomic abundances patterns across the region. We found novel co-occurrence patterns among taxa that could not be explained by shared responses to environmental gradients, suggesting the possibility that interspecific interactions influence seagrass invertebrate abundance and distribution. Our results suggest that biodiversity and ecosystem functions provided by seagrass meadows reflect ecological processes occurring both within meadows and across seascapes, and that management of eelgrass habitat for biodiversity may be most effective when both local and regional processes are considered.</p>
Data from: Metacommunity structure of stream insects across three hierarchical spatial scales
<p>A major challenge in community ecology is to understand the underlying factors driving metacommunity (i.e. a set of local communities connected through species dispersal) dynamics. However, little is known about the effects of varying spatial scale on the relative importance of environmental and spatial (i.e. dispersal related) factors in shaping metacommunities and on the relevance of different dispersal pathways. Using a hierarchy of insect metacommunities at three spatial scales (a small, within-stream scale, intermediate, among-stream scale, and large, among-sub-basin scale), we assessed whether the relative importance of environmental and spatial factors shaping metacommunity structure varies predictably across spatial scales, and tested how the importance of different dispersal routes vary across spatial scales. We also studied if different dispersal ability groups differ in the balance between environmental and spatial control. Variation partitioning showed that environmental factors relative to spatial factors were more important for community composition at the within-stream scale. In contrast, spatial factors (i.e. eigenvectors from Moran's eigenvector maps) relative to environmental factors were more important at the among-sub-basin scale. These results indicate that environmental filtering is likely to be more important at the smallest scale with highest connectivity, while dispersal limitation seems to be more important at the largest scale with lowest connectivity. Community variation at the among-stream and among-sub-basin scales were strongly explained by geographical and topographical distances, indicating that overland pathways might be the main dispersal route at the larger scales among more isolated sites. The relative effect of environmental and spatial factors on insect communities varied between low and high dispersal ability groups; this variation was inconsistent among three hierarchical scales. In sum, our study indicates that spatial scale, connectivity and dispersal ability jointly shape stream metacommunities.</p>
Data from: Resource stoichiometry and consumers control the biodiversity-productivity relationship in pelagic metacommunities
Recent theory suggests that biodiversity and productivity are both constrained by resource supply rates and ratios, and that resource stoichiometry is the key to understand the relationship between biodiversity and productivity. We experimentally tested this theory using pelagic metacommunities. We amended existing predictions by explicitly considering evenness as biodiversity aspect and consumer instead of competitive control of algal biomass. The metacommunities received different phosphorus (P)-supply, the three patches within each metacommunity differed in nitrogen (N)-supply to create different N:P ratios (2, 16, 128). All patches were inoculated with a phytoplankton assemblage consisting of 5 species, half of the metacommunities received 2 ciliate species as consumers. At the level of the entire metacommunity, algal biomass increased whereas species richness and evenness decreased with increasing P-supply. Without consumers, resource use efficiency (RUE, realized biomass per unit P) increased with increasing richness and evenness. Consumer presence reduced overall biomass and richness and precluded a correlation between RUE and biodiversity. At the patch level, local evenness correlated to higher RUE at both imbalanced N:P ratios (2 or 128) but not at balanced N:P. In conclusion, overall P-supply constrained realized biomass and altered diversity, whereas resource stoichiometry shaped the relationship between biodiversity and RUE.
Data from: Community rescue in experimental metacommunities
The conditions that allow biodiversity to recover following severe environmental degradation are poorly understood. We studied community rescue, the recovery of a viable community through the evolutionary rescue of many populations within an evolving community, in metacommunities of soil microbes adapting to a herbicide. The metacommunities occupied a landscape of crossed spatial gradients of the herbicide (Dalapon) and a resource (glucose), whereas their constituent communities were either isolated or connected by dispersal. The spread of adapted communities across the landscape and the persistence of communities when that landscape was degraded were strongly promoted by dispersal, and the capacity to adapt to lethal stress was also related to community size and initial diversity. After abrupt and lethal stress, community rescue was most frequent in communities that had previously experienced sublethal levels of stress and had been connected by dispersal. Community rescue occurred through the evolutionary rescue of both initially common taxa, which remained common, and of initially rare taxa, which grew to dominate the evolved community. Community rescue may allow productivity and biodiversity to recover from severe environmental degradation.
Data from: Evolution of resource specialisation in competitive metacommunities
Spatial environmental heterogeneity coupled with dispersal can promote ecological persistence of diverse metacommunities. Does this premise hold when metacommunities evolve? Using a 2-resource competition model, we studied the evolution of resource-uptake specialization as a function of resource type (substitutable to essential) and shape of the trade-off between resource uptake affinities (generalist- to specialist-favoring). In spatially homogeneous environments, evolutionarily stable coexistence of consumers is only possible for sufficiently substitutable resources and specialist-favoring trade-offs. Remarkably, these same conditions yield comparatively low diversity in heterogeneous environments, because they promote sympatric evolution of two opposite resource specialists that, together, monopolize the two resources everywhere. Consumer diversity is instead maximized for intermediate trade-offs and clearly substitutable or clearly essential resources, where evolved metacommunities are characterized by contrasting selection regimes. Taken together, our results present new insights on resource-competition-mediated evolutionarily-stable diversity in homogeneous and heterogeneous environments, which should be applicable to a wide range of systems.
Data from: Predator identity influences metacommunity assembly
1.Predation is among the most important biotic factors influencing natural communities, yet we have a rather rudimentary understanding of its role in modulating metacommunity assembly. 2.We experimentally examined the effects of two different predators (a generalist and a specialist) on metacommunity assembly, using protist microcosm metacommunities that varied in predator identity, dispersal among local communities, and the history of species colonization into local communities. 3.Generalist predation resulted in reduced α diversity and increased β diversity irrespective of dispersal, likely due to predation-induced stochastic extinction of different prey species in different local communities. Dispersal, however, induced source-sink dynamics in the presence of specialist predators, resulting in higher α diversity and marginally lower β diversity. 4.These results demonstrate the distinct effects of different predators on prey metacommunity assembly, emphasizing the need to explore the role of predator diet breadth in structuring metacommunities.
Data from: Condition-dependent movement and dispersal in experimental metacommunities
Dispersal and the underlying movement behaviour are processes of pivotal importance for understanding and predicting metapopulation and metacommunity dynamics. Generally, dispersal decisions are condition-dependent and rely on information in the broad sense, like the presence of conspecifics. However, studies on metacommunities that include interspecific interactions generally disregard condition-dependence. Therefore, it remains unclear whether and how dispersal in metacommunities is condition-dependent and whether rules derived from single-species contexts can be scaled up to (meta)communities. Using experimental protist metacommunities, we show how dispersal and movement depend on and are adjusted by the strength of interspecific interactions. We found that the predicting movement and dispersal in metacommunities requires knowledge on behavioural responses to intra- and interspecific interaction strengths. Consequently, metacommunity dynamics inferred directly from single-species metapopulations without taking interspecific interactions into account are likely flawed. Our work identifies the significance of condition-dependence for understanding metacommunity dynamics, stability and the coexistence and distribution of species.
Data from: Dispersal promotes compensatory dynamics and stability in forced metacommunities
Understanding the factors that govern the stability of populations and communities has gained increasing importance as habitat fragmentation and environmental perturbations continue to escalate due to human activities. Dispersal is commonly viewed as essential to the maintenance of diversity in spatially subdivided communities, but few experiments have explored how dispersal interacts with the spatiotemporal components of environmental perturbations to determine community-level stability. We examined these processes using an experimental planktonic system composed of three competing species of zooplankton. We subjected zooplankton metacommunities to varying levels of dispersal and pH perturbations that varied in their degree of spatial synchrony. We show that dispersal can reverse the destabilizing effects of environmental forcing when perturbations are spatially asynchronous. Asynchrony in pH perturbations generated spatially and temporally varying species refugia that promoted source-sink dynamics and allowed prolonged persistence of zooplankton species that were otherwise extirpated in synchronously varying metacommunities. This, in turn, increased local species diversity, promoted compensatory population dynamics and enhanced local community-level stability. Our results indicate that patterns of spatial covariation in environmental variability are critical to predicting the effects of dispersal on the dynamics and persistence of communities.
Data from: Eco-evolutionary dynamics in metacommunities: ecological inheritance, helping within species, and harming between species
Understanding selection on intra- and inter-specific interactions that take place in dispersal-limited communities is a challenge for ecology and evolutionary biology. The problem is that local demographic stochasticity generates eco-evolutionary dynamics that are generally too complicated to make tractable analytical investigations. Here, we circumvent this problem by approximating the selection gradient on a quantitative trait that influences local community dynamics, assuming that such dynamics are deterministic with a stable fixed point. We nonetheless incorporate unavoidable kin selection effects arising from demographic stochasticity. Our approximation reveals that selection depends on how an individual expressing a trait-change influences: (1) its own fitness and the fitness of its current relatives; and (2) the fitness of its downstream relatives through modifications of local ecological conditions (i.e., through ecological inheritance). Mathematically, the effects of ecological inheritance on selection are captured by dispersal-limited versions of press-perturbations of community ecology. We use our approximation to investigate the evolution of helping within- and harming between-species when these behaviours influence demography. We find that altruistic helping evolves more readily when intra-specific competition is for material resources rather than for space because in this case, the costs of kin competition tend to paid by downstream relatives. Similarly, altruistic harming between species evolves when it alleviates downstream relatives from inter-specific competition. Beyond these examples, our approximation can help better understand the influence of ecological inheritance on a variety of eco-evolutionary dynamics in metacommunities, from consumer-resource and predator-prey coevolution to selection on mating systems with demographic feedbacks.
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