Blowin? in the wind: Wind directionality affects wetland invertebrate metacommunities in Patagonia

EPELE LUIS BELTRAN; DANIEL ANDRÉS DOS SANTOS; ROMAIN SARREMEJANE; GRECH, M.G.; MANZO, L.M.; MACCHI PABLO A; MISERENDINO MARIA LAURA; NURIA BONADA; MIGUEL CAÑEDO-ARGÜELLES

Global Ecology and Biogeography

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2021

1466-822X

Aim: To assess the relative importance of wind intensity and direction in explainingwetland invertebrate metacommunity organization.Location: Seventy-eightwetland ponds in Patagonia (Argentina) covering a studyarea of 3.5 × 105 km2.Time period: Ponds were sampled once between 2006 and 2014.Major taxa studied: One hundred and fifty-eighttaxa of wetland aquatic invertebrates.Methods: We generated two beta diversity matrices (based on flying and non-flyinginvertebrates) and six predictor matrices, including three environmental distance matrices,a topographic distance between ponds, and two wind pairwise matrices differingin wind speed. Using Moran spectral randomization of Mantel (MSR-Mantel)tests(which account for spatial autocorrelation), we assessed the relationship betweenthe response and the predictor matrices. We used a network-constrainedversion ofthe nestedness metric based on overlap and decreasing fill (NODF), to assess if windanisotropy (i.e., direction-dependent)affected community nestedness among ponds.Results: Flying dispersers? dissimilarity was significantly explained by environmentalvariables, whereas non-flyinginvertebrates? dissimilarity was not significantlyexplained by any of the distances tested. When wind direction was ignored, windspeed had a negligible effect on both types of communities, whereas when it wasconsidered a consistent nested pattern emerged, with the eastern ponds (downwind)communities being subsets of those from the western ponds (upwind).