The role of species sorting and dispersal on structuring the aquatic invertebrate assemblages of isolated spring fens
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| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Recent explanation of the processes driving ecological metacommunities aim to integrate two opposing paradigms: (1) Species exhibit different environmental niches and ecological communities are consequently structured by habitat features (species sorting paradigm); (2) Species are environmentally equivalent and ecological communities are therefore determined by species dispersal abilities (neutral model). Many previous studies suffer from several drawbacks, e.g. direct comparison across taxonomic groups sampled at the same plots is nearly absent or environmental variation often covariates with space in nature and thus it is impossible to distinguish between their effects. In this project we want to address the question how species sorting and dispersal limitations drive the species distributions in spring fens in the Western Carpathian Mts. We are comparing several taxocenoses inhabiting the same sites and the effect shared by environment and space will be minimized by appropriate selection of sampling sites. Spring fens are suitable model habitat for testing ecological and biogeographical hypotheses because of their relatively stable environmental conditions and isolation. The main ecological gradient of fens is the gradient of mineral richness which strongly determines richness and composition of species assemblages across distant groups of organisms (e.g. algae, vascular plants, Testacea, Mollusca, Clitellata). The studied taxocoenoses: Clitellata, Copepoda, Plecoptera, Trichoptera and Chironomidae differ in their environmental demands and have different dispersal abilities. Each taxocenosis will be analysed separately and the pure and shared effects of species sorting and spatial structure on the species composition will be detect and compared. This study is financially supported by P505/11/0779 and MUNI/A/0757/2012. |
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