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Discrete steps of successional pathways differ in kelp forest and urchin barren communities

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Abstract

The role of organisms in community assembly and functioning is a crucial question of community ecology. We address this issue in a particular marine coastal ecosystem at SE Pacific: although kelp forests and urchin barrens are conspicuous benthic systems in rocky habitats, only a few studies have been focused on studying their successional patterns (especially following disturbances). In this work, we present successional pathways from micro-periphyton to macro-organisms observed during a 14-month period in kelp forests and urchin barrens in the Antofagasta Peninsula, Chile. The community composition and structure showed habitat-specific successional pathways with different dominant organisms in these two communities. Likewise, during their successional trajectories, both communities showed different number of discrete temporal stages. Kelp forests displayed a longer successional pathway of 7 discrete stages, while the barren bed succession pathway was composed only of 4 stages. We argue that this difference would be due to self-organising processes. This finding may have relevant implications for conservation and monitoring, since the intensive harvest of kelp species will not only increase the dominance of urchin barrens, but it would also facilitate its own, self-determined, more efficient (with few steps) successional pattern and the consequent persistence.

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Abbreviations

nMDS:

Non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination

PERMAVOVA:

Permutation-based multivariate analysis of variance

RELATE:

Testing matched similarity matrices

CAP:

Canonical analysis of principal coordinates

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Acknowledgements

RAU was sponsored by GRANT MECESUP/MECE ANT0711 (Chile). FJ was supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office–NKFIH, Grants OTKA K 116071 and GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00057.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Área de Macroalgas Y Biodiversidad, Instituto del Mar del Perú – IMARPE, Av. La Ribera 805, Huanchaco, La Libertad, Perú

    Roberto A. Uribe

  2. Departamento de Biología Marina, Facultad de Ciencias del Mar, Universidad Católica del Norte, Coquimbo, Chile

    Marco Ortiz

  3. Instituto de Ciencias Naturales Alexander Von Humboldt, Universidad de Antofagasta, P.O. Box 170, Antofagasta, Chile

    Marco Ortiz

  4. Centre for Ecological Research, Balaton Limnological Institute, Tihany, Hungary

    Ferenc Jordán

  5. Centre for Ecological Research, Evolutionary Systems Research Group, Tihany, Hungary

    Ferenc Jordán

Authors
  1. Roberto A. Uribe
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  2. Marco Ortiz
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  3. Ferenc Jordán
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Correspondence to Marco Ortiz.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Mean (X) ± standard deviation (SD) of species or groups collected from ceramic panels per cm2 and per immersion period at kelp forest.

figure a

Appendix 2

List of the taxa recorded at kelp forest during the experiment. Numbers are mean (X) and standard deviation (SD) per month.

figure b

Appendix 3

Mean (X) ± standard deviation (SD) of species or groups collected from ceramic panels per cm2 and per immersion period ay urchin barrens.

figure c

Appendix 4

List of the taxa recorded at urchin barren during the experiment. Numbers are mean (X) and standard deviation (SD) per month.

figure d

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Uribe, R.A., Ortiz, M. & Jordán, F. Discrete steps of successional pathways differ in kelp forest and urchin barren communities. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY 22, 41–54 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42974-020-00035-2

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