Journal article
Metacommunity Structures of Macroinvertebrates and Diatoms in High Mountain Streams, Yunnan, China
FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, v 8, 571887
21 Oct 2020
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
The metacommunity concept has received increasing interest in the past two decades. However, there has been limited research examining metacommunity structure of communities in high mountain streams. These ecosystems are often physically constrained and can display large environmental gradients within a relatively small spatial extent. Here, we examined metacommunity structures of stream organisms in a high mountain region, which is part of the Hengduan Mountains region in Southwest China. Macroinvertebrates and diatoms were collected from six streams in two opposite aspects of the same mountain with different connectivity between streams. On the west aspect, streams are tributaries of a river (i.e., river-connected) while streams flow into a lake (i.e., lake-connected) on the east aspect. We used Elements of Metacommunity Structure analysis to explore the metacommunity structuring of these two biological models. We also compared the contribution of dispersal and environmental filtering in structuring metacommunities by looking at Euclidean, network, topographic, and environmental distances. Communities of diatoms and macroinvertebrates were structured with clear turnover on both aspects. Further, diatom communities exhibited Clementsian structure on both aspects. Macroinvertebrates exhibited different metacommunity structures on the river-connected aspect (Quasi-Clementsian) and lake-connected aspect (Clementsian). Our results indicated that on the lake-connected aspect, environmental filtering had a stronger association with community dissimilarity than on the river-connected aspect for both macroinvertebrate and diatom communities. Diatom communities were more influenced by environmental filtering on the east aspect with weakened network connectivity compared with those on the west aspect. Our results also emphasized the potential effects of biotic interactions between macroinvertebrates and diatoms on shaping community structures of one other. Our study provides substantial elements to further understand metacommunity structure and highlights the necessity of future research to reveal the underlying mechanisms of community structuring in these remote ecosystems.
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Details
- Title
- Metacommunity Structures of Macroinvertebrates and Diatoms in High Mountain Streams, Yunnan, China
- Publication Details
- FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, v 8, 571887
- Publisher
- FRONTIERS MEDIA SA; LAUSANNE
- Grant note
- This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U1602262) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the GLANCE project (Global Change Effects in River Ecosystems; 01 LN1320A). FH was supported by the SMART Joint Doctorate (Science for the MAnagement of Rivers and their Tidal systems), funded with the support of the Erasmus Mundus programme of the European Union. AM was additionally supported by the US NSF Macrosystems Grant No. 1442595. We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Initiative of Freie Universitat Berlin.
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Drexel University
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000584550900001
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85094951197
- Other Identifier
- 991021860677004721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Ecology