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Landscape configuration affects probability of apex predator presence and community structure in experimental metacommunities

Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, highlighting the urgent requirement for well-designed protected areas. Design tactics previously proposed to promote biodiversity include enhancing the number, connectivity, and heterogeneity of reserve patches. However, how the importance of these...

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Autores principales: Wolfe, Ellie, Hammill, Edd, Memmott, Jane, Clements, Christopher F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9120115/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35523981
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00442-022-05178-9
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author Wolfe, Ellie
Hammill, Edd
Memmott, Jane
Clements, Christopher F.
author_facet Wolfe, Ellie
Hammill, Edd
Memmott, Jane
Clements, Christopher F.
author_sort Wolfe, Ellie
collection PubMed
description Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, highlighting the urgent requirement for well-designed protected areas. Design tactics previously proposed to promote biodiversity include enhancing the number, connectivity, and heterogeneity of reserve patches. However, how the importance of these features changes depending on what the conservation objective is remains poorly understood. Here we use experimental landscapes containing ciliate protozoa to investigate how the number and heterogeneity in size of habitat patches, rates of dispersal between neighbouring patches, and mortality risk of dispersal across the non-habitat ‘matrix’ interact to affect a number of diversity measures. We show that increasing the number of patches significantly increases γ diversity and reduces the overall number of extinctions, whilst landscapes with heterogeneous patch sizes have significantly higher γ diversity than those with homogeneous patch sizes. Furthermore, the responses of predators depended on their feeding specialism, with generalist predator presence being highest in a single large patch, whilst specialist predator presence was highest in several-small patches with matrix dispersal. Our evidence emphasises the importance of considering multiple diversity measures to disentangle community responses to patch configuration. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00442-022-05178-9.
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spelling pubmed-91201152022-05-21 Landscape configuration affects probability of apex predator presence and community structure in experimental metacommunities Wolfe, Ellie Hammill, Edd Memmott, Jane Clements, Christopher F. Oecologia Community Ecology–Original Research Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, highlighting the urgent requirement for well-designed protected areas. Design tactics previously proposed to promote biodiversity include enhancing the number, connectivity, and heterogeneity of reserve patches. However, how the importance of these features changes depending on what the conservation objective is remains poorly understood. Here we use experimental landscapes containing ciliate protozoa to investigate how the number and heterogeneity in size of habitat patches, rates of dispersal between neighbouring patches, and mortality risk of dispersal across the non-habitat ‘matrix’ interact to affect a number of diversity measures. We show that increasing the number of patches significantly increases γ diversity and reduces the overall number of extinctions, whilst landscapes with heterogeneous patch sizes have significantly higher γ diversity than those with homogeneous patch sizes. Furthermore, the responses of predators depended on their feeding specialism, with generalist predator presence being highest in a single large patch, whilst specialist predator presence was highest in several-small patches with matrix dispersal. Our evidence emphasises the importance of considering multiple diversity measures to disentangle community responses to patch configuration. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00442-022-05178-9. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2022-05-06 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9120115/ /pubmed/35523981 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00442-022-05178-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Community Ecology–Original Research
Wolfe, Ellie
Hammill, Edd
Memmott, Jane
Clements, Christopher F.
Landscape configuration affects probability of apex predator presence and community structure in experimental metacommunities
title Landscape configuration affects probability of apex predator presence and community structure in experimental metacommunities
title_full Landscape configuration affects probability of apex predator presence and community structure in experimental metacommunities
title_fullStr Landscape configuration affects probability of apex predator presence and community structure in experimental metacommunities
title_full_unstemmed Landscape configuration affects probability of apex predator presence and community structure in experimental metacommunities
title_short Landscape configuration affects probability of apex predator presence and community structure in experimental metacommunities
title_sort landscape configuration affects probability of apex predator presence and community structure in experimental metacommunities
topic Community Ecology–Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9120115/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35523981
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00442-022-05178-9
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