Dispersal ability determines the role of environmental, spatial and temporal drivers of metacommunity structure.

ABSTRACT: Recently, community ecologists are focusing on the relative importance of local environmental factors and proxies to dispersal limitation to explain spatial variation in community structure. Albeit less explored, temporal processes may also be important in explaining species composition variation in metacommunities occupying dynamic systems. We aimed to evaluate the relative role of environmental, spatial and temporal variables on the metacommunity structure of different organism groups in the Upper Paraná River floodplain (Brazil). We used data on macrophytes, fish, benthic macroinvertebrates, zooplankton, periphyton, and phytoplankton collected in up to 36 habitats during a total of eight sampling campaigns over two years. According to variation partitioning results, the importance of pr

SUBMITTER: Padial AA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4207762 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature