Abstract
Unraveling the processes that drive diversity patterns remains a central challenge for ecology, and an increased understanding is especially urgent to address and mitigate escalating diversity loss. Studies have primarily focused on singular taxonomic groups, but recent research has begun evaluating spatial diversity patterns across multiple taxonomic groups and suggests taxa may have congruence in their diversity patterns. Here, we use surveys of the coral reef benthic groups: scleractinian corals, macroalgae, sponges and gorgonians conducted in the Bahamian Archipelago across 27 sites to determine if there is congruence between taxonomic groups in their site-level diversity patterns (i.e. alpha diversity: number of species, and beta diversity: differences in species composition) while accounting for environmental predictors (i.e. depth, wave exposure, market gravity (i.e. human population size and distance to market), primary productivity, and grazing). Overall, we found that the beta diversities of these benthic groups were significant predictors of each other. The most consistent relationships existed with algae and coral, as their beta diversity was a significant predictor of every other taxa’s beta diversity, potentially due to their strong biotic interactions and dominance on the reef. Conversely, we found no congruence patterns in the alpha diversity of the taxa. Market gravity and exposure showed the most prevalent correlation with both alpha and beta diversity for the taxa. Overall, our results suggest that coral reef benthic taxa can have spatial congruence in species composition, but not number of species, and that future research on biodiversity trends should consider that taxa may have non-independent patterns.
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Code is available at https://github.com/JamieMcDevittIrwin/McDevittIrwinetal_Oecologia_BBP_BetaDiversity.
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15 March 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04886-y
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) through a Postgraduate Scholarship for JMI and the National Science Foundation’s Biocomplexity in the Environment Program (OCE-0119976). We thank J. Knowles for GIS help and I. Chollett for wave exposure data. This is contribution #226 from the Coastlines and Oceans Division in the Institute of Environment at Florida International University.
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This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) through a Postgraduate Scholarship for JMI and the National Science Foundation’s Biocomplexity in the Environment Program (OCE-0119976).
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JMI wrote the initial draft and performed the analyses while FM, PM, AH, CK, DB collected the data and contributed to the writing
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McDevitt-Irwin, J.M., Kappel, C., Harborne, A.R. et al. Coupled beta diversity patterns among coral reef benthic taxa. Oecologia 195, 225–234 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04826-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04826-2