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Do latitudinal gradients exist in New Zealand stream invertebrate metacommunities?
That biodiversity declines with latitude is well known, but whether a metacommunity process is behind this gradient has received limited attention. We tested the hypothesis that dispersal limitation is progressively replaced by mass effects with increasing latitude, along with a series of related hy...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5971837/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29844999 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4898 |
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author | Tonkin, Jonathan D. Death, Russell G. Muotka, Timo Astorga, Anna Lytle, David A. |
author_facet | Tonkin, Jonathan D. Death, Russell G. Muotka, Timo Astorga, Anna Lytle, David A. |
author_sort | Tonkin, Jonathan D. |
collection | PubMed |
description | That biodiversity declines with latitude is well known, but whether a metacommunity process is behind this gradient has received limited attention. We tested the hypothesis that dispersal limitation is progressively replaced by mass effects with increasing latitude, along with a series of related hypotheses. We explored these hypotheses by examining metacommunity structure in stream invertebrate metacommunities spanning the length of New Zealand’s two largest islands (∼1,300 km), further disentangling the role of dispersal by deconstructing assemblages into strong and weak dispersers. Given the highly dynamic nature of New Zealand streams, our alternative hypothesis was that these systems are so unpredictable (at different stages of post-flood succession) that metacommunity structure is highly context dependent from region to region. We rejected our primary hypotheses, pinning this lack of fit on the strong unpredictability of New Zealand’s dynamic stream ecosystems and fauna that has evolved to cope with these conditions. While local community structure turned over along this latitudinal gradient, metacommunity structure was highly context dependent and dispersal traits did not elucidate patterns. Moreover, the emergent metacommunity types exhibited no trends, nor did the important environmental variables. These results provide a cautionary tale for examining singular metacommunities. The considerable level of unexplained contingency suggests that any inferences drawn from one-off snapshot sampling may be misleading and further points to the need for more studies on temporal dynamics of metacommunity processes. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5971837 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-59718372018-05-29 Do latitudinal gradients exist in New Zealand stream invertebrate metacommunities? Tonkin, Jonathan D. Death, Russell G. Muotka, Timo Astorga, Anna Lytle, David A. PeerJ Biodiversity That biodiversity declines with latitude is well known, but whether a metacommunity process is behind this gradient has received limited attention. We tested the hypothesis that dispersal limitation is progressively replaced by mass effects with increasing latitude, along with a series of related hypotheses. We explored these hypotheses by examining metacommunity structure in stream invertebrate metacommunities spanning the length of New Zealand’s two largest islands (∼1,300 km), further disentangling the role of dispersal by deconstructing assemblages into strong and weak dispersers. Given the highly dynamic nature of New Zealand streams, our alternative hypothesis was that these systems are so unpredictable (at different stages of post-flood succession) that metacommunity structure is highly context dependent from region to region. We rejected our primary hypotheses, pinning this lack of fit on the strong unpredictability of New Zealand’s dynamic stream ecosystems and fauna that has evolved to cope with these conditions. While local community structure turned over along this latitudinal gradient, metacommunity structure was highly context dependent and dispersal traits did not elucidate patterns. Moreover, the emergent metacommunity types exhibited no trends, nor did the important environmental variables. These results provide a cautionary tale for examining singular metacommunities. The considerable level of unexplained contingency suggests that any inferences drawn from one-off snapshot sampling may be misleading and further points to the need for more studies on temporal dynamics of metacommunity processes. PeerJ Inc. 2018-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC5971837/ /pubmed/29844999 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4898 Text en © 2018 Tonkin et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Biodiversity Tonkin, Jonathan D. Death, Russell G. Muotka, Timo Astorga, Anna Lytle, David A. Do latitudinal gradients exist in New Zealand stream invertebrate metacommunities? |
title | Do latitudinal gradients exist in New Zealand stream invertebrate metacommunities? |
title_full | Do latitudinal gradients exist in New Zealand stream invertebrate metacommunities? |
title_fullStr | Do latitudinal gradients exist in New Zealand stream invertebrate metacommunities? |
title_full_unstemmed | Do latitudinal gradients exist in New Zealand stream invertebrate metacommunities? |
title_short | Do latitudinal gradients exist in New Zealand stream invertebrate metacommunities? |
title_sort | do latitudinal gradients exist in new zealand stream invertebrate metacommunities? |
topic | Biodiversity |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5971837/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29844999 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4898 |
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