Abstract
Community assembly relies on deterministic niche-based processes (e.g., biotic interactions), and stochastic sources of unpredictable variation (e.g., colonization history), that combined will influence late-stage community structure. When community founders present distinct functional traits and a colonization–competition trade-off is not operating, initial colonization can result in late-stage assemblages of variable diversity and composed by different species sets, depending if early colonizers facilitate or inhibit subsequent colonization and survival. By experimentally manipulating the functional identity of founders and predators access during the development of fouling communities, we tested how founder traits constrain colonization history, species interactions and thereby regulate community diversity. We used as founders functionally different fouling organisms (colonial and solitary ascidians, and arborescent and flat-encrusting bryozoans) to build experimental communities that were exposed or protected against predation using a caging approach. Ascidians and bryozoans are pioneer colonizers in benthic communities and also good competitors, but the soft-body of ascidians makes them more susceptible to predators than mineralized bryozoans. When ascidians were founders, their dominance (but not richness) was reduced by predation, resulting in no effects of predators on overall diversity. Conversely, when bryozoans were founders, both space limitation and predator effects resulted in species-poor communities, with reduced number and cover of ascidian species and high overall dominance at the end of the experiment. We, thus, highlight that current species interactions and colonization contingencies related to founder identity should not be viewed as isolated drivers of community organization, but rather as strongly interacting processes underlying species distribution patterns and diversity.
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Data are available on the Figshare repository—https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13335332.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the staff at Centro de Biologia Marinha (CEBIMar-USP) and Yacht Club Ilhabela (YCI) for field assistance. Marcel O. Tanaka, Guilherme H. Pereira Filho, Rafael S. Oliveira, José R. Trigo, and Fabiane Gallucci provided helpful suggestions on early versions of this manuscript. EAV thanks São Paulo Research Foundation-FAPESP for the award of a PhD scholarship (#2012/18432-1). GMD and AAVF are supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, (308268/2019‐9, 301601/2018-6) and by the São Paulo Research Foundation-FAPESP (#2016/17647-5 and #2019/15628-1). This is a contribution of the Research Centre for Marine Biodiversity of the University of São Paulo (NP-Biomar/USP).
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This study was funded by São Paulo Research Foundation with a PhD scholarship awarded to Edson A. Vieira (#2012/18432-1). GMD is supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, (308268/2019‐9) and by São Paulo Research Foundation-FAPESP (#2016/17647-5 and #2019/15628-1).
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EAV, AAVF, and GMD formulated the idea, designed the experiments, conceived statistical analyses, and wrote the manuscript. EAV performed the experiments, field work, and data analyses.
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Vieira, E.A., Flores, A.A.V. & Dias, G.M. Colonization history meets further niche processes: how the identity of founders modulates the way predation structure fouling communities. Oecologia 196, 1167–1178 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04996-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04996-7