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Trait-Environment Relationship of Aquatic Vegetation in a Tropical Pond Complex System

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Abstract

The relationship between organisms’ traits and the characteristics of their habitats has been a central theme in ecology. Using two complementary approaches to analyze three-matrices of species composition, functional trait, and environment data (RLQ and fourth-corner analyses), we tested if environmental gradient determines aquatic plant traits in ponds in the Pantanal wetland. Furthermore, we tried to understand if plant composition is spatially structured and if environmental gradient is correlated with taxonomic and functional community properties. We sampled aquatic plants coverage in 20 ponds and measured pond size, depth and pH to represent the environmental gradient. We found significant turnover of several traits of aquatic plants along the environmental gradient, being niche partitioning the most probable process structuring plant communities. There was no evidence of spatial autocorrelation determining species composition in the scale of the study, which may indicate that the annual flooding can act as homogenizing factor that promotes species co-occurrence along the ponds. Taxonomic abundance and functional richness were positively related with environmental gradient. Larger and deeper ponds provide higher resource availability thus supporting more functional attributes and vegetation cover. Our results support the hypothesis that niche process is the main driver of aquatic plants in the Pantanal.

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Acknowledgments

We thank T. Siqueira, A. A. Padial, S. M. Thomaz and F. O. Roque for comments on early versions. We thank Embrapa Pantanal and Centro de Pesquisa do Pantanal (CPP) for financial support; W.M. Tomas, S.M. Sales, G. Mourão and D.P. Eaton for logistic support. A.F. Beda for assistance with field sampling and V. Pott for species identification. Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) provided a master’s fellowship to M. Delatorre and R. B. Rodrigues and financial support to V. L. Ferreira (#309305/2018-7) and G. A. Damasceno-Júnior. Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) provided scholarships to N. L. Cunha and M. Delatorre. This study was partially financed by CAPES - Finance Code 001. V. L. Ferreira is researcher CNPq (#409003/2018-2).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia e Conservação, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Cidade Universitária s/n, Campo Grande, 79070-900, MS, Brazil

    Milena Delatorre

  2. Grupo de Ecología de la Polinización, INIBIOMA, CONICET-Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Quintral 1250, 8400, San Carlos de Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina

    Nicolay Leme da Cunha

  3. Programa de Pós-graduação em Biologia Vegetal, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Cidade Universitária s/n, Campo Grande, MS, 79070-900, Brazil

    Rozângela Batista Rodrigues

  4. Laboratório de Ecologia Vegetal, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Cidade Universitária s/n, Campo Grande, 79070-900, MS, Brazil

    Geraldo Alves Damasceno-Júnior

  5. Laboratório de Pesquisa em Herpetologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Cidade Universitária s/n, Campo Grande, 79070-900, MS, Brazil

    Vanda Lúcia Ferreira

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  1. Milena Delatorre
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  2. Nicolay Leme da Cunha
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  3. Rozângela Batista Rodrigues
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  4. Geraldo Alves Damasceno-Júnior
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Correspondence to Milena Delatorre.

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Table S1

Ponds environmental variables used to correlate traits and environment on aquatic plants communities in the Pantanal wetlands, Brazil. (DOCX 16 kb)

Fig. S1

Sample based Jackknife rarefaction curve estimated by 1000 randomizations using the frequency of incidence of species, which represents an estimate of ponds aquatic macrophyte richness, during the end of the dry-season, in the Pantanal wetlands, Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Error bars are the standard deviation. (DOCX 27 kb)

Fig. S2

Mantel correlogram showing lack of spatial auto-correlation between Hellinger transformed aquatic macrophytes and geographical coordinates in 20 ponds of the Pantanal wetlands. Dot filled in black represents significant auto-correlation. (DOCX 81 kb)

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Delatorre, M., da Cunha, N.L., Rodrigues, R.B. et al. Trait-Environment Relationship of Aquatic Vegetation in a Tropical Pond Complex System. Wetlands 40, 299–310 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-019-01189-0

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