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More than the sum of the parts : annual partitioning within spatial guilds underpins community regulation

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Magurran_2018_More_than_the_sum_PRSB_AAM.pdf (1.151Mb)
Date
25/07/2018
Author
Magurran, Anne Elizabeth
Henderson, P. A.
Keywords
Synchrony
Estuarine fish
Time series
Modularity
Community stability
QH301 Biology
DAS
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Abstract
To withstand the pressures of a rapidly changing world, resilient ecosystems should exhibit compensatory dynamics, including uncorrelated temporal shifts in population sizes. The observation that diversity is maintained through time in many systems is evidence that communities are indeed regulated and stabilized, yet empirical observations suggest that positive covariance in species abundances is widespread. This paradox could be resolved if communities are composed of a number of ecologically relevant sub-units in which the members compete for resources, but whose abundances fluctuate independently. Such modular organization could explain community regulation, even when the community as a whole appears synchronized.To test this hypothesis, we quantified temporal synchronicity in annual population abundances within spatial guilds in an estuarine fish assemblage that has been monitored for 36 years. We detected independent fluctuations in annual abundances within guilds. By contrast, the assemblage as a whole exhibited temporal synchronicity—an outcome linked to the dynamics of guild dominants, which were synchronized with each other. These findings underline the importance of modularity in explaining community regulation and highlight the need to protect assemblage composition and structure as well as species richness.
Citation
Magurran , A E & Henderson , P A 2018 , ' More than the sum of the parts : annual partitioning within spatial guilds underpins community regulation ' , Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , vol. 285 , no. 1883 , 20180659 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0659
Publication
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0659
ISSN
0962-8452
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2018, the Author(s). This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created accepted version manuscript following peer review and as such may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0659
Description
Funding: ERC (BioTIME 250189 and BioCHANGE 727440) and the Royal Society.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/15649

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