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

EPELE LB; DOS SANTOS D; SARREMEJANE R; GRECH MG; MACCHI P; MANZO LM; MISERENDINO ML; BONADA N; CAÑEDO-ARGUELLES M

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 explaining wetland invertebrate metacommunity organization.Location: 80 ponds in Patagonia (Argentina) covering a study area of 4.6 × 105 km2.Major taxa studied: 158 taxa of wetland aquatic invertebrates.Methods: We generated two beta diversity matrices (based on active and passive invertebrates) and six predictor matrices, including three environmental distance matrices, a topographic distance between ponds, and two wind pairwise matrices differing in wind speed. Using MSR-Mantel tests (which account for spatial autocorrelation), we assessed the relationship between the response and the predictor matrices. We developed a novel statistical approach called network-constrained NODF calculation and used it to assess if wind anisotropy (i.e. direction dependent) affected community nestedness among ponds.Results: Active dispersers? dissimilarity was significantly explained by environmental variables, whereas passive dispersers? dissimilarity was not significantly explained by any of the distances tested. Wind speed was negligible for both types of communities but wind direction resulted in a consistent nested pattern, with the eastern ponds communities being subsets of those from the western ponds.Main conclusions: We found that the invertebrate communities were mainly assembled by a combination of environmental factors and wind directionality, although this depended on the dispersal ability of the organisms. Overall, our study provides a methodological framework to improve our understanding of the influence of directional factors in isolated ecosystems.