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Spatial and environmental analysis of an ostracod metacommunity from endorheic lakes

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Abstract

The metacommunity concept has promoted a new theoretical view of communities that emphasizes their inter-dependence in a multi-scale nature. However, empirical studies testing the proposed mechanisms structuring communities are still scarce. Here we present a multi-scale spatial analysis on the ostracod metacommunity from endorheic lakes in the Central Iberian Peninsula. For this purpose, multivariate ordination, scalograms and variation partitioning analysis were used to identify environmental (i.e. species sorting) and spatial control (i.e. dispersal limitation, mass effects), and their effects on the metacommunity. The results indicate that both species sorting and dispersal processes structure the metacommunity. The main environmental factors contributing to species sorting were salinity and ephemerality. In addition, significant broad-scale spatial components also structure the species assemblages, suggesting ostracod dispersal limitation within the spatial extent considered. Our study confirms the importance of species sorting, but also reveals how dispersal processes play a role in the structure of ostracod metacommunities.

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Acknowledgments

This work was performed in the framework of the project ECOLAKE “Ecological patterns in endorheic lakes: the keys to their conservation, CGL2012-38909”, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Government of Spain, and by the European Union through the European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER) “One way to make Europe”. Carlos Rochera is a recipient of a VALi+d postdoctoral contract of Generalitat Valenciana APOSTD/2015/088. We want to thank all members of the project ECOLAKE for their helpful insights, and particularly Xavier Armengol, Antonio Picazo, José Antonio Gil-Delgado, Rafael U. Gosálvez, Ángel Velasco, Celia Laguna and Máximo Florín for their suggestions and help in the field. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their constructive comments and help.

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Correspondence to Andreu Castillo-Escrivà.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 3 and 4.

Table 3 Forward selection procedure for environmental variables computed by the R-package packfor
Table 4 Forward selection procedure for spatial variables computed by the R-package packfor

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Castillo-Escrivà, A., Valls, L., Rochera, C. et al. Spatial and environmental analysis of an ostracod metacommunity from endorheic lakes. Aquat Sci 78, 707–716 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-015-0462-z

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