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Decay of similarity across tropical forest communities : integrating spatial distance with soil nutrients
Peguero, Guille (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Ferrín Guardiola, Miquel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal i d'Ecologia)
Sardans i Galobart, Jordi (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Verbruggen, Erik (University of Antwerp. Department of Biology)
Ramírez-Rojas, Irene (University of Antwerp. Department of Biology)
Van Langenhove, Leonardo (University of Antwerp. Department of Biology)
Verryckt, Lore (University of Antwerp. Department of Biology)
Murienne, Jerome (Université de Toulouse. Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique)
Iribar, Amaia (Université de Toulouse. Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique)
Zinger, Lucie (Université Paris. Institut de Biologie de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure)
Grau Fernández, Oriol (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Orivel, Jerome (Université des Antilles. Université de Guyane)
Stahl, Clément (Université des Antilles. Université de Guyane)
Courtois, Elodie (Université de Guyane. Laboratoire Ecologie, évolution, Interactions des Systèmes Amazoniens)
Asensio, Dolores (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Gargallo-Garriga, Albert (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Llusia, Joan (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Margalef, Olga (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Ogaya Inurrigarro, Romà (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Richter, Andreas (University of Vienna. Department of Microbiology and Ecosystem Science)
Janssens, Ivan (University of Antwerp. Department of Biology)
Peñuelas, Josep (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)

Date: 2021
Abstract: Understanding the mechanisms that drive the change of biotic assemblages over space and time is the main quest of community ecology. Assessing the relative importance of dispersal and environmental species selection in a range of organismic sizes and motilities has been a fruitful strategy. A consensus for whether spatial and environmental distances operate similarly across spatial scales and taxa, however, has yet to emerge. We used censuses of four major groups of organisms (soil bacteria, fungi, ground insects, and trees) at two observation scales (1-m sampling point vs. 2,500-m plots) in a topographically standardized sampling design replicated in two tropical rainforests with contrasting relationships between spatial distance and nutrient availability. We modeled the decay of assemblage similarity for each taxon set and site to assess the relative contributions of spatial distance and nutrient availability distance. Then, we evaluated the potentially structuring effect of tree composition over all other taxa. The similarity of nutrient content in the litter and topsoil had a stronger and more consistent selective effect than did dispersal limitation, particularly for bacteria, fungi, and trees at the plot level. Ground insects, the only group assessed with the capacity of active dispersal, had the highest species turnover and the flattest nonsignificant distance−decay relationship, suggesting that neither dispersal limitation nor nutrient availability were fundamental drivers of their community assembly at this scale of analysis. Only the fungal communities at one of our study sites were clearly coordinated with tree composition. The spatial distance at the smallest scale was more important than nutrient selection for the bacteria, fungi, and insects. The lower initial similarity and the moderate variation in composition identified by these distance-decay models, however, suggested that the effects of stochastic sampling were important at this smaller spatial scale. Our results highlight the importance of nutrients as one of the main environmental drivers of rainforest communities irrespective of organismic or propagule size and how the overriding effect of the analytical scale influences the interpretation, leading to the perception of greater importance of dispersal limitation and ecological drift over selection associated with environmental niches at decreasing observation scales.
Grants: Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2019-110521GB-I00
European Commission 610028
Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca SGR/2017-1005
Note: Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UAB
Rights: Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. Creative Commons
Language: Anglès
Document: Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject: Community assembly ; Dispersion ; Environmental filtering ; French Guiana ; Metabarcoding ; Nutrients ; Scale-dependency ; Soil biodiversity
Published in: Ecology, (2021) , art. e03599, ISSN 1939-9170

DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3599
PMID: 34816429


11 p, 896.8 KB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > CREAF (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals) > Imbalance-P
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles

 Record created 2022-01-12, last modified 2023-04-01



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