Nestedness patterns and the role of morphodynamics and spatial distance on sandy beach fauna: ecological hypotheses and conservation strategies.

ABSTRACT: Sandy beach fauna is hypothesized to be mainly structured by environmental variables. As such, it is expected that morphodynamic characteristics are limiting factors, and the species pool inhabiting harsher reflective beaches would be a subset of (i.e., nested in) the fauna of nearby dissipative beaches. We investigated the existence of a nestedness pattern in sandy beach assemblages, as well as the contribution of environmental and spatial variables (i.e., factors that potentially affect an assemblage regardless of environmental conditions - typically related to distance between sites and dispersal of organisms) on sandy beach macrobenthic fauna. Dissipative beaches had higher species richness than reflective beaches but we found no nestedness pattern. Furthermore, almost every beach show

SUBMITTER: Checon HH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5830602 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature