Disentangling pattern and processes in metacommunity ecology

FERNÁNDEZ, GUSTAVO J; LACORETZ, MARIELA V.

Puerto Iguazú

Congreso; Ornithological Congress of the Americas; 2017

AFO-Aves Argentinas-Sociedad Brasilera de Ornitología

One main goal in community ecology is to identify species assemblage patterns and to study the underlying processes. The metacommunity, defined as a set of communities connected (or not) through dispersal, takes into account the interplay between the regional pool of species and the local communities. New analyses have been developed recently that allow researchers to explore several aspects of metacommunity structure. In this work, this approach was applied to test the hypotheses that the metacommunity of forest birds from north and central Argentina has a nested pattern and to establish the association between the metacommunity pattern and different processes which are able to shape the structure of the communities. Using bird censuses of different ecoregions of Argentina that were obtained from bibliography, we utilized Elements of Metacommunity Structure (EMS) analyses to determine the pattern of best fit for species distributions within a metacommunity. Also, variation partitioning analysis was used to tease apart the roles of spatial structure and environmental filtering in community data. In EMS analysis, a nested pattern was obtained. Moreover, variation partitioning analysis showed that the variability between the communities could be explained by the combination of dispersion and environmental filter processes. The combination of these analyses allows us to infer about processes behind species assemblage patterns. In a context of diversity and forest area loss, it is important to study how the structure of metacommunities was formed and maintained to take proper management measures.