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Temporal nestedness in Chironomidae and the importance of environmental and spatial factors in species rarity

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Abstract

Biological communities are composed of a few common and many rare species. An understanding of the mechanisms that govern the distribution of these species is fundamental to knowledge regarding community ecology. Our hypothesis is that chironomid larvae follow a nested distribution in relation to hydrological periods in Neotropical floodplain lakes, whereby the flood period composition is a subset of the drought periods with a predominance of common species. We collected samples from 18 lakes in 2011 in a flood month and three drought months. The community followed a nested distribution where the spatial factors were more important for rare and common species during the flood and for the common species during all months. Thus, with the increasing connectivity and similarity of environments during the flood, neutral processes, as the dispersal, would govern the community. Conversely, environmental factors were more important for rare species in the drought, which suggest that these species are more specialists, largely influenced by niche-related processes. Thus, our study emphasizes the complexity of biological communities specifically concerning how environmental, spatial, and temporal factors influence community dynamics among species groups.

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Acknowledgments

We thank to S. M. Thomaz, C. C. Bonecker and 2 anonymous referees for suggestions that improved our manuscript. We would like to thank the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER/CNPq) program for the opportunity to develop this study, the Center of Research in Limnology, Ichthyology, and Aquaculture of State University of Maringá (Nupelia/UEM) for logistical support and CAPES and CNPq for post-graduate and post-doctoral scholarships. We would like to thank the Limnology Basic Laboratory/Nupelia for abiotic data.

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  1. Núcleo de Pesquisas em Limnologia, Ictiologia e Aquicultura (Nupélia), Programa de Pós Graduação em Ecologia de Ambientes Aquáticos Continentais (PEA), Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Av. Colombo 5790, Maringá, Paraná, CEP 87020–900, Brazil

    Danielle Katharine Petsch, Gisele Daiane Pinha, Juliana Déo Dias & Alice Michiyo Takeda

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  1. Danielle Katharine Petsch
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Petsch, D.K., Pinha, G.D., Dias, J.D. et al. Temporal nestedness in Chironomidae and the importance of environmental and spatial factors in species rarity. Hydrobiologia 745, 181–193 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-014-2105-0

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