Environmental filtering and community delineation in the streambed ecotone

Autor: Ignacio Peralta-Maraver, Anne L. Robertson, Shai Arnon, Joerg Lewandowski, Julia Reiss, Jason Galloway, Malte Posselt
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Scientific Reports, Vol 8, Iss 1, Pp 1-11 (2018)
Scientific Reports
ISSN: 2045-2322
Popis: A current controversy in ecology is whether biological communities are discrete biological entities or simply study units created for convenience; a debate that becomes even more heated when delimiting communities along ecotones. Here, we report an interdisciplinary study designed to address the interplay between environmental drivers and community ecology in a typical ecotone ecosystem: the streambed. Environmental filtering at a micro-scale determined how diversity, productivity andcomposition of the whole streambed assemblage varied with depth and with the direction of verticalwater exchange. Biomass and production decreased with increasing depth, and were lower underupwelling than downwelling conditions. However, the rate at which biomass and production decreasedwith increasing depth differed significantly for different taxonomic groups. Using quantitativebiocenosis analysis, we also showed that benthic and hyporheic zone assemblages (assemblages inclose juxtaposition) could be clearly distinguished as discrete communities with individual integrity.Vertical hydrodynamic conditions also influenced the demarcation between both communities; the benthic community reached greater depths in downwelling than in upwelling zones.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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