scholarly journals Succession comprises a sequence of threshold-induced community assembly processes towards multidiversity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maximilian Hanusch ◽  
Xie He ◽  
Victoria Ruiz-Hernandez ◽  
Robert R. Junker
Keyword(s):  
Community Assembly ◽  
Biotic Interactions ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Environmental Filters ◽  
Form Complex ◽  
Species Sorting ◽  
Glacier Forefield ◽  
Main Driver ◽  
Abiotic And Biotic Factors ◽  
Stochastic Dispersal

Research on ecological successions and community assembly shaped our understanding of community establishment, co-existence, and diversity. Although both lines of research address the same processes such as dispersal, species sorting, and biotic interactions, they lack unifying concepts. However, recent theoretical advances proposed to integrate both research lines and thus provided hypotheses on how communities assemble over time and form complex ecological systems. This framework predicts a sequence of stochastic and niche-based processes along successional gradients. Shifts in these assembly processes are assumed to occur abruptly once abiotic and biotic factors dominate over dispersal as main driver of community assembly. Considering the multidiversity composed of five organismal groups including plants, animals, and microbes, we empirically show that stochastic dispersal-dominated community assembly is replaced by environmental filters and biotic interactions after around 60 years of succession in a glacier forefield. The niche-based character of later successional processes is further supported by a pronounced decline in multi-beta-diversity after the shift in assembly processes. Our results support recent theories and provide new insights into the emergence of multidiverse and complex ecosystems. Our study will stimulate updates of concepts of community assembly considering multiple taxa with unique and complementary ecological roles and help to bridge the gap between research on successions and community assembly.

scholarly journals Integrating succession and community assembly perspectives

F1000Research ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 2294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Chang ◽  
Janneke HilleRisLambers
Keyword(s):  
Community Assembly ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Biotic Interactions ◽  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
Priority Effects ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
Environmental Filters ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Temporal Perspective ◽  
Modern Analytical

Succession and community assembly research overlap in many respects, such as through their focus on how ecological processes like dispersal, environmental filters, and biotic interactions influence community structure. Indeed, many recent advances have been made by successional studies that draw on modern analytical techniques introduced by contemporary community assembly studies. However, community assembly studies generally lack a temporal perspective, both on how the forces structuring communities might change over time and on how historical contingency (e.g. priority effects and legacy effects) and complex transitions (e.g. threshold effects) might alter community trajectories. We believe a full understanding of the complex interacting processes that shape community dynamics across large temporal scales can best be achieved by combining concepts, tools, and study systems into an integrated conceptual framework that draws upon both succession and community assembly theory.

scholarly journals Water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakes

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Sung Kim ◽  
Seok Hyun Ahn ◽  
In Jae Jeong ◽  
Tae Kwon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Community Assembly ◽  
River Flow ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Oxygen Demand ◽  
Algal Community ◽  
Regional Patterns ◽  
Algal Communities ◽  
Species Sorting ◽  
Metacommunity Structure

AbstractThe metacommunity approach provides insights into how the biological communities are assembled along the environmental variations. The current study presents the importance of water quality on the metacommunity structure of algal communities in six river-connected lakes using long-term (8 years) monitoring datasets. Elements of metacommunity structure were analyzed to evaluate whether water quality structured the metacommunity across biogeographic regions in the riverine ecosystem. The algal community in all lakes was found to exhibit Clementsian or quasi-Clementsian structure properties such as significant turnover, grouped and species sorting indicating that the communities responded to the environmental gradient. Reciprocal averaging clearly classified the lakes into three clusters according to the geographical region in river flow (upstream, midstream, and downstream). The dispersal patterns of algal genera, including Aulacoseira, Cyclotella, Stephanodiscus, and Chlamydomonas across the regions also supported the spatial-based classification results. Although conductivity, chemical oxygen demand, and biological oxygen demand were found to be important variables (loading > |0.5|) of the entire algal community assembly, water temperature was a critical factor in water quality associated with community assembly in each geographical area. These results support the notion that the structure of algal communities is strongly associated with water quality, but the relative importance of variables in structuring algal communities differed by geological regions.

scholarly journals Historical contingency impacts on community assembly and ecosystem function in chemosynthetic marine ecosystems

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitri Kalenitchenko ◽  
Erwan Peru ◽  
Pierre E. Galand
Keyword(s):  
Community Assembly ◽  
Sea Water ◽  
Marine Ecosystem ◽  
Marine Ecosystems ◽  
Metagenomic Sequencing ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Species Sorting ◽  
Environmental Selection ◽  
Microbial Community Assembly

AbstractPredicting ecosystem functioning requires an understanding of the mechanisms that drive microbial community assembly. Many studies have explored microbial diversity extensively and environmental factors are thought to be the principal drivers of community composition. Community assembly is, however, also influenced by past conditions that might affect present-day assemblages. Historical events, called legacy effects or historical contingencies, remain poorly studied in the sea and their impact on the functioning of the communities is not known. We tested the influence, if any, of historical contingencies on contemporary community assembly and functions in a marine ecosystem. To do so, we verified if different inoculum communities colonizing the same substrate led to communities with different compositions. We inoculated wood with sea water microbes from different marine environments that differ in ecological and evolutionary history. Using 16S rRNA and metagenomic sequencing, it was demonstrated that historical contingencies change the composition and potential metabolisms of contemporary communities. The effect of historical events was transient, dominated by environmental selection as, over time, species sorting was a more important driver of community assembly. Our study shows not only that historical contingencies affect marine ecosystems but takes the analysis a step further by characterizing this effect as strong but transient.

Biology and Management of Inland Striped Bass and Hybrid Striped Bass

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Striped Bass ◽  
Prey Availability ◽  
Biotic Interactions ◽  
Early Life History ◽  
Mountain Lake ◽  
First Year ◽  
Fish Prey ◽  
Abiotic And Biotic Factors

<em>Abstract</em>.—The stocking of fingerling striped bass <em>Morone saxatilis</em> in freshwater impoundments has led to the development of successful put-grow-take fisheries throughout the southern United States. However, first-year survival of stocked fingerlings is often low. To enhance stocking success of striped bass, a better understanding is needed on the impacts of different stocking strategies on early life-history dynamics. In this review paper, we first examined the existing literature on the role of abiotic and biotic factors on recruitment dynamics of stocked piscivores in inland freshwater systems. Second, we compiled the results of a progressive series of studies that were completed over a 25-year period in Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, that focused on understanding the relationship between striped bass stocking success and biotic interactions, forage-fish prey availability and dynamics, and first-year recruitment. This case study demonstrated that differential intra-cohort growth and poor first-year winter survival are the primary factors limiting stocking success and that stocking fingerlings at a greater number of sites throughout the lake at lower densities improved recruitment to age 1. With this information, we provide stocking size, time, density, and location strategy recommendations that should yield increased survival and stocking success of striped bass in freshwater impoundments.

Community assembly and species traits

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-246
Author(s):  
Gary G. Mittelbach ◽  
Brian J. McGill
Keyword(s):  
Functional Traits ◽  
Community Assembly ◽  
Species Traits ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Species Pool ◽  
Environmental Filters ◽  
Abiotic Environment ◽  
Local Site ◽  
Powerful Approach ◽  
Regional Species Pool

There is perhaps no more fundamental question in ecology than what determines the number and kinds of species found in a community and their relative abundances. This chapter lays out a powerful approach to answering this question, based on the concepts of a regional species pool and environmental filters. The species pool is the set of species that could potentially colonize a local site or community. Of these potential colonists, some species are limited in their ability to disperse to site, some are limited by their ability to survive the abiotic environment, and some are limited by their interactions with other species. These “filters” act individually or in concert, and the functional traits of species determine their success in passing through these filters to colonize a local site. There is growing empirical evidence that both abiotic and biotic processes select for specific functional traits. Focusing on the functional traits of species may lead to rules of community assembly that are general and help unify a variety of more specific theories.

scholarly journals Coupling Bacterial Community Assembly to Microbial Metabolism across Soil Profiles

mSystems ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Luan ◽  
Chao Liang ◽  
Lijun Chen ◽  
Haotian Wang ◽  
Qinsong Xu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Microbial Community ◽  
Bacterial Community ◽  
Community Assembly ◽  
Carbon Metabolism ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Deep Soil ◽  
Deterministic Processes ◽  
Stochastic Dispersal ◽  
Microbial Community Assembly

ABSTRACT Soil microbial community assembly is crucial for understanding the mechanisms of microbial communities that regulate ecosystem-level functioning. The relative contributions of stochastic and deterministic processes to microbial community assembly remain poorly defined, and major questions exist concerning the soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics of microbial community assembly in deep soil. Here, the bacterial community assembly processes were explored across five soil profile depths (up to 80 cm) during a 15-year field experiment involving four fertilization regimes. We found that the bacterial community assembly was initially governed by deterministic selection in topsoil but was progressively structured by increasing stochastic dispersal with depth. The migration rate (m) and β-null deviation pattern supported the hypothesis of a relatively greater influence of dispersal in deep soil, which was correlated with bacterial community assembly by stochastic processes. These changes in the entire community assembly reflected consistent assembly processes of the two most dominant phyla, Acidobacteria and Chloroflexi. Structural equation modeling showed that soil features (pH and total phosphorus) and bacterial interactions (competition and network complexity) were significantly related to bacterial community assembly in the 0-to-10-cm and 10-to-20-cm layers. Partial Mantel tests, structural equation modeling, and random forest modeling consistently indicated a strong and significant correlation between bacterial community assemblages and SOC dynamics, implying that bacterial assembly processes would potentially suppress SOC metabolism and mineralization when the contributions of stochastic dispersal to communities increased in deeper layers. Our results have important implications for integrating bacterial community assembly processes into the predictions of SOC dynamics. IMPORTANCE We have provided a framework to better understand the mechanisms governing the balance between stochastic and deterministic processes and to integrate the shifts in community assembly processes with microbial carbon metabolism. Our study reinforced that environmental filtering and bacterial cooccurrence patterns influence the stochastic/deterministic continuum of soil bacterial community assembly and that stochasticity may act through deeper soil layers to influence carbon metabolism. Delineating theoretically the potential linkages between community assembly and SOC dynamics across a broad range of microbial systems represents an interesting topic for future research.

scholarly journals Environmental factors influencing fine-scale distribution of Antarctica’s only endemic insect

Oecologia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 194 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-539
Author(s):  
Leslie J. Potts ◽  
J. D. Gantz ◽  
Yuta Kawarasaki ◽  
Benjamin N. Philip ◽  
David J. Gonthier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antarctic Peninsula ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Abiotic Factors ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Biotic Interactions ◽  
Species Distributions ◽  
Biotic Factors ◽  
Belgica Antarctica ◽  
Abiotic And Biotic Factors ◽  
The Antarctic

AbstractSpecies distributions are dependent on interactions with abiotic and biotic factors in the environment. Abiotic factors like temperature, moisture, and soil nutrients, along with biotic interactions within and between species, can all have strong influences on spatial distributions of plants and animals. Terrestrial Antarctic habitats are relatively simple and thus good systems to study ecological factors that drive species distributions and abundance. However, these environments are also sensitive to perturbation, and thus understanding the ecological drivers of species distribution is critical for predicting responses to environmental change. The Antarctic midge, Belgica antarctica, is the only endemic insect on the continent and has a patchy distribution along the Antarctic Peninsula. While its life history and physiology are well studied, factors that underlie variation in population density within its range are unknown. Previous work on Antarctic microfauna indicates that distribution over broad scales is primarily regulated by soil moisture, nitrogen content, and the presence of suitable plant life, but whether these patterns are true over smaller spatial scales has not been investigated. Here we sampled midges across five islands on the Antarctic Peninsula and tested a series of hypotheses to determine the relative influences of abiotic and biotic factors on midge abundance. While historical literature suggests that Antarctic organisms are limited by the abiotic environment, our best-supported hypothesis indicated that abundance is predicted by a combination of abiotic and biotic conditions. Our results are consistent with a growing body of literature that biotic interactions are more important in Antarctic ecosystems than historically appreciated.

scholarly journals A Framework for Collective Behavior in Plant Inspired Growth-Driven Systems, Based on Kinematics of Allotropism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renaud Bastien ◽  
Amir Porat ◽  
Yasmine Meroz
Keyword(s):  
Phase Space ◽  
Collective Behavior ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Plant Root ◽  
Growth Dynamics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Form Complex ◽  
Main Driver ◽  
Adaptive Structure ◽  
Nearby Point

A variety of biological systems are not motile, but sessile in nature, relying on growth as the main driver of their movement. Groups of such growing organisms can form complex structures, such as the functional architecture of growing axons, or the adaptive structure of plant root systems. These processes are not yet understood, however the decentralized growth dynamics bear similarities to the collective behavior observed in groups of motile organisms, such as flocks of birds or schools of fish. Equivalent growth mechanisms make these systems amenable to a theoretical framework inspired by tropic responses of plants, where growth is considered implicitly as the driver of the observed bending towards a stimulus. We introduce two new concepts related to plant tropisms: point tropism, the response of a plant to a nearby point signal source, and allotropism, the growth-driven response of plant organs to neighboring plants. We first analytically and numerically investigate the 2D dynamics of single organs responding to point signals fixed in space. Building on this we study pairs of organs interacting via allotropism, i.e.each organ senses signals emitted at the tip of their neighbor and responds accordingly. In the case of local sensing we find a rich phase space. We describe the different phases, as well as the sharp transitions between them. We also find that the form of the phase space depends on initial conditions. This work sets the stage towards a theoretical framework for the investigation and understanding of systems of interacting growth-driven individuals.

scholarly journals Ecosystem size-induced environmental fluctuations affect the temporal dynamics of community assembly mechanisms

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raven L Bier ◽  
Máté Vass ◽  
Anna J Székely ◽  
Silke Langenheder
Keyword(s):  
Community Assembly ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Bacterial Community Composition ◽  
Dispersal Limitation ◽  
Priority Effects ◽  
Environmental Fluctuation ◽  
Species Sorting ◽  
Ecosystem Size ◽  
Environmental Fluctuations ◽  
Over Time

Understanding processes that determine community membership and abundance is important for many fields from theoretical community ecology to conservation. However, spatial community studies are often conducted only at a single timepoint despite the known influence of temporal variability on community assembly processes. Here we used a spatiotemporal study to determine how environmental fluctuation differences induced by mesocosm volumes (larger volumes were more stable) influence assembly processes of aquatic bacterial metacommunities along a press disturbance gradient. By combining path analysis and network approaches, we found mesocosm size categories had distinct relative influences of assembly process and environmental factors that determined spatiotemporal bacterial community composition, including dispersal and species sorting by conductivity. These processes depended on, but were not affected proportionately by, mesocosm size. Low fluctuation, large mesocosms primarily developed through the interplay of species sorting that became more important over time and transient priority effects as evidenced by more time-delayed associations. High fluctuation, small mesocosms had regular disruptions to species sorting and greater importance of ecological drift and dispersal limitation indicated by lower richness and higher taxa replacement. Together, these results emphasize that environmental fluctuations influence ecosystems over time and its impacts are modified by biotic properties intrinsic to ecosystem size.

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