Environmental filtering and community delineation in the streambed ecotone.

ABSTRACT: A current controversy in ecology is whether biological communities are discrete biological entities or simply study units created for convenience; a debate that becomes even more heated when delimiting communities along ecotones. Here, we report an interdisciplinary study designed to address the interplay between environmental drivers and community ecology in a typical ecotone ecosystem: the streambed. Environmental filtering at a micro-scale determined how diversity, productivity and composition of the whole streambed assemblage varied with depth and with the direction of vertical water exchange. Biomass and production decreased with increasing depth, and were lower under upwelling than downwelling conditions. However, the rate at which biomass and production decreased with increasing dep

SUBMITTER: Peralta-Maraver I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6203860 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature