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Toutain M, Belouard N, Renault D, Haubrock PJ, Kurtul I, Aksu S, Emiroğlu Ö, Kouba A, Tarkan AS, Balzani P. Assessing the role of non-native species and artificial water bodies on the trophic and functional niche of Mediterranean freshwater fish communities. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2024; 938:173520. [PMID: 38810734 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173520] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/27/2024] [Revised: 05/14/2024] [Accepted: 05/24/2024] [Indexed: 05/31/2024]
Abstract
Habitat alterations and the introduction of non-native species have many ecological impacts, including the loss of biodiversity and a deterioration of ecosystem functioning. The effects of these combined stressors on the community trophic web and functional niche are, however, not completely clear. Here, we investigated how artificial ecosystems (i.e. reservoirs) and non-native species may influence the trophic and functional niche space of freshwater fish communities. To do so, we used carbon and nitrogen stable isotope and abundance data to compute a set of isotopic, trait, and functional metrics for 13 fish communities sampled from 12 distinct ecosystems in Türkiye. We show that in reservoirs, fish were more similar in their trophic niche compared to lakes, where the trophic niche was more variable, due to higher habitat complexity. However, there were no differences in the trait and functional metrics between the two ecosystem types, suggesting a higher prey diversity than assumed in reservoirs. We also found that the number of non-native species did not affect the trophic niche space, nor the trait or functional space occupied by the fish community. This indicates that non-native species tended to overlap their trophic niche with native species, while occupying empty functional niches in the recipient community functional space. Similarly, the proportion of non-native species did not affect any trophic, trait, or functional metric, suggesting that changes in community composition were not reflected in changes in the community niche space. Moreover, we found that trait richness, but not functional richness, was positively related to the isotopic niche width and diversity, indicating that a wider occupied trait niche space corresponded with a wider occupied trophic niche and lesser interspecific similarity. Our findings underscore the complexity of ecological relationships within freshwater ecosystems and highlight the need for comprehensive management strategies to mitigate the impacts of human activities and biological invasions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mathieu Toutain
- Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters, South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, 389 25 Vodňany, Czech Republic; Université de Rennes, CNRS, ECOBIO [(Ecosystèmes, biodiversité, évolution)], 35000 Rennes, France.
| | - Nadège Belouard
- Université de Rennes, CNRS, ECOBIO [(Ecosystèmes, biodiversité, évolution)], 35000 Rennes, France
| | - David Renault
- Université de Rennes, CNRS, ECOBIO [(Ecosystèmes, biodiversité, évolution)], 35000 Rennes, France
| | - Phillip J Haubrock
- Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters, South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, 389 25 Vodňany, Czech Republic; Department of River Ecology and Conservation, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, 63571 Gelnhausen, Germany; CAMB, Center for Applied Mathematics and Bioinformatics, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait
| | - Irmak Kurtul
- Faculty of Fisheries, Ege University, Bornova 35100, İzmir, Türkiye; Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset, United Kingdom
| | - Sadi Aksu
- Vocational School of Health Services, Eskişehir Osmangazi University, Eskişehir, Türkiye
| | - Özgür Emiroğlu
- Department of Biology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Eskişehir Osmangazi University, Eskişehir, Türkiye
| | - Antonín Kouba
- Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters, South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, 389 25 Vodňany, Czech Republic
| | - Ali Serhan Tarkan
- Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset, United Kingdom; Department of Ecology and Vertebrate Zoology, Faculty of Biology and Environmental Protection, University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland; Department of Basic Sciences, Faculty of Fisheries, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Muğla, Türkiye
| | - Paride Balzani
- Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters, South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, 389 25 Vodňany, Czech Republic.
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Parmentier T, Bonte D, De Laender F. A successional shift enhances stability in ant symbiont communities. Commun Biol 2024; 7:645. [PMID: 38802499 PMCID: PMC11130137 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-024-06305-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2024] [Accepted: 05/08/2024] [Indexed: 05/29/2024] Open
Abstract
Throughout succession, communities undergo structural shifts, which can alter the relative abundances of species and how they interact. It is frequently asserted that these alterations beget stability, i.e. that succession selects for communities better able to resist perturbations. Yet, whether and how alterations of network structure affect stability during succession in complex communities is rarely studied in natural ecosystems. Here, we explore how network attributes influence stability of different successional stages of a natural network: symbiotic arthropod communities forming food webs inside red wood ant nests. We determined the abundance of 16 functional groups within the symbiont community across 51 host nests in the beginning and end stages of succession. Nest age was the main driver of the compositional shifts: symbiont communities in old nests contained more even species abundance distributions and a greater proportion of specialists. Based on the abundance data, we reconstructed interaction matrices and food webs of the symbiont community for each nest. We showed that the enhanced community evenness in old nests leads to an augmented food web stability in all but the largest symbiont communities. Overall, this study demonstrates that succession begets stability in a natural ecological network by making the community more even.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Parmentier
- Terrestrial Ecology Unit, Department of Biology, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium.
- Research Unit of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, naXys, ILEE, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium.
| | - Dries Bonte
- Terrestrial Ecology Unit, Department of Biology, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
| | - Frederik De Laender
- Research Unit of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, naXys, ILEE, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium
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3
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Song C, Spaak JW. Trophic tug-of-war: Coexistence mechanisms within and across trophic levels. Ecol Lett 2024; 27:e14409. [PMID: 38590122 DOI: 10.1111/ele.14409] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/23/2023] [Revised: 02/26/2024] [Accepted: 03/06/2024] [Indexed: 04/10/2024]
Abstract
Ecological communities encompass rich diversity across multiple trophic levels. While modern coexistence theory has been widely applied to understand community assembly, its traditional formalism only allows assembly within a single trophic level. Here, using an expanded definition of niche and fitness differences applicable to multitrophic communities, we study how diversity within and across trophic levels affects species coexistence. If each trophic level is analysed separately, both lower- and higher trophic levels are governed by the same coexistence mechanisms. In contrast, if the multitrophic community is analysed as a whole, different trophic levels are governed by different coexistence mechanisms: coexistence at lower trophic levels is predominantly limited by fitness differences, whereas coexistence at higher trophic levels is predominantly limited by niche differences. This dichotomy in coexistence mechanisms is supported by theoretical derivations, simulations of phenomenological and trait-based models, and a case study of a primeval forest ecosystem. Our work provides a general and testable prediction of coexistence mechanism operating in multitrophic communities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chuliang Song
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA
| | - Jurg W Spaak
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
- Institute for Environmental Sciences, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Landau, Germany
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4
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Beaudrot L, Acevedo MA, Gorczynski D, Harris NC. Geographic differences in body size distributions underlie food web connectance of tropical forest mammals. Sci Rep 2024; 14:6965. [PMID: 38521800 PMCID: PMC10960815 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-57500-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2023] [Accepted: 03/19/2024] [Indexed: 03/25/2024] Open
Abstract
Understanding variation in food web structure over large spatial scales is an emerging research agenda in food web ecology. The density of predator-prey links in a food web (i.e., connectance) is a key measure of network complexity that describes the mean proportional dietary breadth of species within a food web. Connectance is a critical component of food web robustness to species loss: food webs with lower connectance have been shown to be more susceptible to secondary extinctions. Identifying geographic variation in food web connectance and its drivers may provide insight into community robustness to species loss. We investigated the food web connectance of ground-dwelling tropical forest mammal communities in multiple biogeographic regions to test for differences among regions in food web connectance and to test three potential drivers: primary productivity, contemporary anthropogenic pressure, and variation in mammal body mass distributions reflective of historical extinctions. Mammal communities from fifteen protected forests throughout the Neo-, Afro-, and Asian tropics were identified from systematic camera trap arrays. Predator-prey interaction data were collected from published literature, and we calculated connectance for each community as the number of observed predator-prey links relative to the number of possible predator-prey links. We used generalized linear models to test for differences among regions and to identify the site level characteristics that best predicted connectance. We found that mammal food web connectance varied significantly among continents and that body size range was the only significant predictor. More possible predator-prey links were observed in communities with smaller ranges in body size and therefore sites with smaller body size ranges had higher mean proportional dietary breadth. Specifically, mammal communities in the Neotropics and in Madagascar had significantly higher connectance than mammal communities in Africa. This geographic variation in contemporary mammalian food web structure may be the product of historical extinctions in the Late Quaternary, which led to greater losses of large-bodied species in the Neotropics and Madagascar thus contributing to higher average proportional dietary breadth among the remaining smaller bodied species in these regions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lydia Beaudrot
- Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Department of BioSciences, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
- Department of Integrative Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
| | - Miguel A Acevedo
- Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
| | - Daniel Gorczynski
- Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Department of BioSciences, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Nyeema C Harris
- Applied Wildlife Ecology Lab, School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
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Revel-Muroz A, Akulinin M, Shilova P, Tyakht A, Klimenko N. Stability of human gut microbiome: Comparison of ecological modelling and observational approaches. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2023; 21:4456-4468. [PMID: 37745638 PMCID: PMC10511340 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2023.08.030] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/20/2023] [Revised: 08/27/2023] [Accepted: 08/27/2023] [Indexed: 09/26/2023] Open
Abstract
The gut microbiome plays a pivotal role in the human body, and perturbations in its composition have been linked to various disorders. Stability is an essential property of a healthy human gut microbiome, which allows it to maintain its functional richness under the external influences. This property has been explored through two distinct methodologies - mathematical modelling based on ecological principles and statistical analysis drawn from observations in interventional studies. Here we conducted a meta-analysis aimed to compare the two approaches utilising the data from 9 interventional and time series studies encompassing 3512 gut microbiome profiles obtained via 16S rRNA gene sequencing. By employing the previously published compositional Lotka-Volterra method, we modelled the dynamics of the microbial community and evaluated ecological stability measures. These measures were compared to those based on observed microbiome changes. There was a substantial correlation between the outcomes of the two approaches. Particularly, local stability assessed within the ecological paradigm was positively correlated with observational stability measures accounting for the compositional nature of microbiome data. Additionally, we were able to reproduce the previously reported inverse relationship between the community's robustness to microorganism loss and local stability, attributed to the distinct impacts of coefficient characterising the network decomposition on these two stability assessments. Our findings demonstrate harmonisation between the ecological and observational approaches to microbiome analysis, advancing the understanding of healthy gut microbiome concept. This paves the way to develop efficient microbiome-targeting interventions for disease prevention and treatment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anastasia Revel-Muroz
- Center for Precision Genome Editing and Genetic Technologies for Biomedicine, Institute of Gene Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
| | - Mikhail Akulinin
- Department of Biological and Medical Physics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Institutskiy per. 9, Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region, Russia
| | - Polina Shilova
- Department of Biology, Moscow State University, 1–12 Leninskie Gory, Moscow, Russia
| | - Alexander Tyakht
- Center for Precision Genome Editing and Genetic Technologies for Biomedicine, Institute of Gene Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
- Atlas Biomed Group - Knomx LLC, Interchange House, Office 1.58, 81–85 Station Road, Croydon CR0 2AJ, United Kingdom
| | - Natalia Klimenko
- Center for Precision Genome Editing and Genetic Technologies for Biomedicine, Institute of Gene Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
- Atlas Biomed Group - Knomx LLC, Interchange House, Office 1.58, 81–85 Station Road, Croydon CR0 2AJ, United Kingdom
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Spaak JW, Ke P, Letten AD, De Laender F. Different measures of niche and fitness differences tell different tales. OIKOS 2022. [DOI: 10.1111/oik.09573] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Jurg W. Spaak
- Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell Univ. Ithaca NY USA
| | - Po‐Ju Ke
- Inst. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, National Taiwan Univ. Taipei Taiwan
- Dept of Ecology&Evolutionary Biology, Princeton Univ. Princeton NJ USA
| | - Andrew D. Letten
- School of Biological Sciences, Univ. of Queensland Brisbane QLD Australia
| | - Frederik De Laender
- Univ. of Namur Namur Belgium
- Inst. of Life‐Earth‐Environment, Namur Center for Complex Systems Namur Belgium
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Collins CG, Elmendorf SC, Smith JG, Shoemaker L, Szojka M, Swift M, Suding KN. Global change re-structures alpine plant communities through interacting abiotic and biotic effects. Ecol Lett 2022; 25:1813-1826. [PMID: 35763598 DOI: 10.1111/ele.14060] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/03/2022] [Revised: 01/31/2022] [Accepted: 05/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Global change is altering patterns of community assembly, with net outcomes dependent on species' responses to the abiotic environment, both directly and mediated through biotic interactions. Here, we assess alpine plant community responses in a 15-year factorial nitrogen addition, warming and snow manipulation experiment. We used a dynamic competition model to estimate the density-dependent and -independent processes underlying changes in species-group abundances over time. Density-dependent shifts in competitive interactions drove long-term changes in abundance of species-groups under global change while counteracting environmental drivers limited the growth response of the dominant species through density-independent mechanisms. Furthermore, competitive interactions shifted with the environment, primarily with nitrogen and drove non-linear abundance responses across environmental gradients. Our results highlight that global change can either reshuffle species hierarchies or further favour already-dominant species; predicting which outcome will occur requires incorporating both density-dependent and -independent mechanisms and how they interact across multiple global change factors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Courtney G Collins
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA.,Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Sarah C Elmendorf
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
| | - Jane G Smith
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
| | - Lauren Shoemaker
- Department of Botany, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA
| | - Megan Szojka
- Department of Botany, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA
| | - Margaret Swift
- Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Katharine N Suding
- Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
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Spaak JW, Carpentier C, De Laender F. Species richness increases fitness differences, but does not affect niche differences. Ecol Lett 2021; 24:2611-2623. [PMID: 34532957 DOI: 10.1111/ele.13877] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/26/2021] [Revised: 06/21/2021] [Accepted: 08/20/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
A key question in ecology is what limits species richness. Modern coexistence theory presents the persistence of species as a balance between niche differences and fitness differences that favour and hamper coexistence, respectively. With most applications focusing on species pairs, however, we know little about if and how this balance changes with species richness. Here, we apply recently developed definitions of niche and fitness differences, based on invasion analysis, to multispecies communities. We present the first mathematical proof that, for invariant average interaction strengths, the average fitness difference among species increases with richness, while the average niche difference stays constant. Extensive simulations with more complex models and analyses of empirical data confirmed these mathematical results. Combined, our work suggests that, as species accumulate in ecosystems, ever-increasing fitness differences will at some point exceed constant niche differences, limiting species richness. Our results contribute to a better understanding of coexistence multispecies communities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jurg W Spaak
- University of Namur, Institute of Life-Earth-Environment, Namur Center for Complex Systems, Namur, Belgium.,Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
| | - Camille Carpentier
- University of Namur, Institute of Life-Earth-Environment, Namur Center for Complex Systems, Namur, Belgium
| | - Frederik De Laender
- University of Namur, Institute of Life-Earth-Environment, Namur Center for Complex Systems, Namur, Belgium
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