The scale-dependent effect of environmental filters on species turnover and nestedness in an estuarine benthic community
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Data
2019
Tipo de documento
Artigo de Periodico
Título da Revista
ISSN da Revista
Título de Volume
Área do conhecimento
Ciências Exatas e da Terra
Modalidade de acesso
Acesso embargado
Editora
Autores
Netto, Sergio Antônio
Menegotto, Andre
Dambros, Cristian Dambros
Orientador
Coorientador
Resumo
Environmental filtering is a major mechanism structuring ecological communities.
However, it is still not clear how different abiotic drivers composing the environmental filter
interact with each other to determine local species assemblage and create spatial patterns in
species distribution. Here, we evaluated the effects of two strong and uncorrelated environmental
variables (salinity and sediment properties) on the b-diversity of an estuarine macrobenthic
community while accounting for spatial effects. Our results show that the benthic community
composition has a strong spatial structure along the estuary, which can be greatly explained by
salinity and sediment variation. Salinity is most associated with species replacement (turnover),
whereas sediment is more important for species loss (nestedness). However, the effects of sediment
variation on nestedness are mainly detected at a smaller spatial scale (estuarine sectors),
whereas the effects of salinity on species turnover are stronger as spatial scale increases (entire
estuary). Our findings suggest that environmental filters can drive both turnover and nestedness
components of b-diversity, but that their relative importance depends on the spatial scale
of investigation. Although abiotic drivers associated with detrimental effects (sediment) usually
result in nestedness, larger spatial scales encompass abiotic drivers associated with different
suitable conditions (salinity), increasing the relative importance of the replacement component
of species b-diversity.
Palavras-chave
Abiotic filter, Beta-diversity, Brackish water, Coastal lagoon, Community, Macrofauna, Laguna