Variation in aggregate descriptors of rocky shore communities: a test of synchrony across spatial scales

ARRIBAS, LORENA P.; GUTIÉRREZ, JORGE L.; BAGUR, MARÍA; SORIA, SABRINA A.; PENCHASZADEH, PABLO E.; PALOMO, M. GABRIELA

MARINE BIOLOGY

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2019 vol. 166

0025-3162

Rocky shore communities usually show complexpatterns of compositional variation in space and time. Yet, this does not ruleout the possibility of observing coherent temporal trends in aggregatecommunity variables (e.g., biomass and number of species or individuals withinfunctional groups or whole communities) due to broad-scale, seasonal, orinterannual environmental controls that operate independently of local speciescomposition. The goal of this study was to evaluate whether fve aggregatecommunity variables (mussel density, mussel biomass, algal biomass,macroinvertebrate density, and species density) show synchronous patterns ofshort-term, temporal variation (2 years) across eight rocky shore sites locatedin the Southwestern Atlantic and within two biogeographic regions (WarmTemperate Southwestern Atlantic and Magellanic). The study predictions were (1)that synchrony will increase as the spatial scale of analysis becomes smallerand, (2) that pairs of nearby sites will be more synchronized than pairs ofdistant ones. These predictions were weakly, if at all, supported by the data.Synchrony in aggregate community descriptors rarely occurred across the studiedrocky shore sites. It can be observed at any spatial scale, and it can evenfail to happen among sites located a few hundred meters apart. This suggeststhat local processes are overarching sources of short-term variability at theregional level, highlights the caution needed in generalizing from spatiallylimited time series data, and also underscores the potential limitations ofclimate envelope models to predict how aggregate community variables andrelated ecosystems functions (e.g., primary and secondary production) will respondto global climate change.