Temporal variation of β-diversity and assembly mechanisms in a bacterial metacommunity.

ABSTRACT: The turnover of community composition across space, β-diversity, is influenced by different assembly mechanisms, which place varying weight on local habitat factors, such as environmental conditions and species interactions, and regional factors such as dispersal and history. Several assembly mechanisms may function simultaneously; however, little is known about how their importance changes over time and why. Here, we implemented a field survey where we sampled a bacterial metacommunity consisting of 17 rock pools located at the Swedish Baltic Sea coast at 11 occasions during 1 year. We determined to which extent communities were structured by different assembly mechanisms using variation partitioning and studied changes in β-diversity across environmental gradients over time. β-Diversity

SUBMITTER: Langenheder S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3358023 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature