Highly variable species distribution models in a subarctic stream metacommunity: patterns, mechanisms and implications

• Published in: Freshwater Biology
• Main Authors: de Mendoza, Guillermo, Kaivosoja, Riikka, Grönroos, Mira, Hjort, Jan, Ilmonen, Jari, Kärnä, Olli-Matti, Paasivirta, Lauri, Tokola, Laura, Heino, Jani
• Other Authors: Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes (CEAB), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas España = Spanish National Research Council Spain (CSIC), Géographie de l'environnement (GEODE), Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès (UT2J), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of Oulu, Helsingin yliopisto = Helsingfors universitet = University of Helsinki, Natural Environment Centre Oulu, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), This study is part of the project “Spatial scaling, metacommunity structure and patterns in stream communities” that was supported financially by a grant from the Academy of Finland. Further support was provided by grants (no: 273557, no: 267995 and no: 285040) from the Academy of Finland.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2018
• Subjects: beta regression; comparative analysis; insects; metacommunity theory; single-species 61 distribution models; stream macroinvertebrates; subarctic streams; [SDV.EE]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Ecology; environment; [SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes; Subarctic
• Online Access: https://univ-tlse2.hal.science/hal-02450949; https://univ-tlse2.hal.science/hal-02450949/document; https://univ-tlse2.hal.science/hal-02450949/file/deMendoza_etal_2018_FWB.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.12993

Special Issue: Metacommunities in river networks: The importance of network structure and connectivity on patterns and processes. International audience Metacommunity theory focuses on assembly patterns in ecological communities, originally exemplified through four different, yet non-exclusive, perspectives: patch dynamics, species sorting, source-sink dynamics, and neutral theory. More recently, three exclusive components have been proposed to describe a different metacommunity framework: habitat heterogeneity, species equivalence, and dispersal. Here, we aim at evaluating the insect metacommunity of a subarctic stream network under these two different frameworks. We first modelled the presence/absence of 47 stream insects in northernmost Finland using binomial generalised linear models (GLMs). The deviance explained by pure local environmental (E), spatial (S), and climatic variables (C) was then analysed across species using beta regression. In this comparative analysis, site occupancy, as well as taxonomic and biological trait vectors obtained from principal coordinate analysis, were used as predictor variables. Single-species distributions were better explained by in-stream environmental and spatial factors than by climatic forcing, but in a highly variable fashion. This variability was difficult to relate to the taxonomic relatedness among species or their biological trait similarity. Site occupancy, however, was related to model performance of the binomial GLMs based on spatial effects: as populations are likely to be better connected for common species due to their near ubiquity, spatial factors may also explain better their distributions. According to the classical four-perspective framework, the observation of both environmental and spatial effects suggests a role for either mass effects or species sorting constrained by dispersal limitation, or both. Taxonomic and biological traits, including the different dispersal capability of species, were scarcely important, which undermines the patch ...