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Spatial autocorrelation and dispersal limitation in freshwater organisms

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Abstract

Dispersal can limit the ranges of species and the diversity of communities. Despite its importance, little is known about its role in freshwater habitats and its relation to habitat type (lentic vs. lotic), especially for organisms with cryptic dispersal methods such as plankton. Poor dispersers are expected to show more clumped distributions or greater spatial autocorrelation (SA) in community composition than good dispersers. We examined patterns of SA across freshwater taxa with different dispersal modes (active vs. passive) and their association with habitat type (lake vs. stream) using 18 spatially explicit community composition data sets. We found significant relationships between SA and body size among taxa in lake habitats, but not in streams. However, the increase in SA with body size in lakes was driven entirely by fishes—organisms ranging in size from diatoms to macro-invertebrates showed equivalent levels of SA. These results support the idea that large organisms are less effective dispersers in aquatic environments, resulting in greater SA in community structure over broad scales. Streams may be effectively more connected than lakes as patterns of SA and body size were weaker in lotic habitats. Our data suggest that the critical threshold where greater body size increases dispersal limitation seems to come at the juncture between invertebrates and vertebrates rather than that between unicellular and multicellular organisms as has been previously suggested.

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Acknowledgements

Although some of the data described in this article have been funded wholly or in part by the US Environmental Protection Agency through its EMAP Surface Waters Program, they have not been subjected to Agency review, and therefore do not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency and no official endorsement of the conclusions should be inferred. Some of the data were obtained from the Swedish National Monitoring Programme funded by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. We also thank Peter Eklöv, Jordan Rosenfeld and Henrik Ragnarsson for providing access to their data. Jeff Nekola and an anonymous reviewer provided valuable comments. J. B. S. and K. C. were supported in part by postdoctoral fellowships from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, a center funded by the NSF (grant no. DEB-0072909), the University of California, and the Santa Barbara campus. J. B. S. and K. C. were supported by grants from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, 6270 University Blvd, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Jonathan B. Shurin

  2. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W, Canada

    Karl Cottenie

  3. Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Carl-von-Ossietzky-University Oldenburg, Schleusenstrasse 1, 26385, Wilhelmshaven, Germany

    Helmut Hillebrand

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  1. Jonathan B. Shurin
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  2. Karl Cottenie
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Correspondence to Jonathan B. Shurin.

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Communicated by Carla Caceres.

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Shurin, J.B., Cottenie, K. & Hillebrand, H. Spatial autocorrelation and dispersal limitation in freshwater organisms. Oecologia 159, 151–159 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-008-1174-z

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