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Immigration rates and species niche characteristics affect the relationship between species richness and habitat heterogeneity in modeled meta-communities.

ABSTRACT: The positive relationship between habitat heterogeneity and species richness is a cornerstone of ecology. Recently, it was suggested that this relationship should be unimodal rather than linear due to a tradeoff between environmental heterogeneity and population sizes. Increased environmental heterogeneity will decrease effective habitat sizes, which in turn will increase the rate of local species extinctions. The occurrence of the unimodal richness-heterogeneity relationship at the habitat scale was confirmed in both empirical and theoretical studies. However, it is unclear whether it can occur at broader spatial scales, for meta-communities in diverse and patchy landscapes. Here, I used a spatially explicit meta-community model to quantify the roles of two species-level characteristics, niche width and immigration rates, on the type of the richness-heterogeneity relationship at the landscape scale. I found that both positive and unimodal richness-heterogeneity relationships can occur in meta-communities in patchy landscapes. The type of the relationship was affected by the interactions between inter-patch immigration rates and species' niche widths. Unimodal relationships were prominent in meta-communities comprising species with wide niches but low inter-patch immigration rates. In contrast, meta-communities consisting of species with narrow niches and high immigration rates exhibited positive relationships. Meta-communities comprising generalist species are therefore likely to exhibit unimodal richness-heterogeneity relationships as long as low immigration rates prevent rescue effects and patches are small. The richness-heterogeneity relationship at the landscape scale is dictated by species' niche widths and inter-patch immigration rates. These immigration rates, in turn, depend on the interaction between species dispersal capabilities and habitat connectivity, highlighting the roles of both species traits and landscape structure in generating the richness-heterogeneity relationship at the landscape scale.

SUBMITTER: Bar-Massada A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4359120 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Immigration rates and species niche characteristics affect the relationship between species richness and habitat heterogeneity in modeled meta-communities.

Bar-Massada Avi A

PeerJ 20150310

The positive relationship between habitat heterogeneity and species richness is a cornerstone of ecology. Recently, it was suggested that this relationship should be unimodal rather than linear due to a tradeoff between environmental heterogeneity and population sizes. Increased environmental heterogeneity will decrease effective habitat sizes, which in turn will increase the rate of local species extinctions. The occurrence of the unimodal richness-heterogeneity relationship at the habitat scal ...[more]

PMID: 25780779

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Project description:BackgroundThe total amount of native vegetation is an important property of fragmented landscapes and is known to exert a strong influence on population and metapopulation dynamics. As the relationship between habitat loss and local patch and gap characteristics is strongly non-linear, theoretical models predict that immigration rates should decrease dramatically at low levels of remaining native vegetation cover, leading to patch-area effects and the existence of species extinction thresholds across fragmented landscapes with different proportions of remaining native vegetation. Although empirical patterns of species distribution and richness give support to these models, direct measurements of immigration rates across fragmented landscapes are still lacking.Methodology/principal findingsUsing the Brazilian Atlantic forest marsupial Gray Slender Mouse Opossum (Marmosops incanus) as a model species and estimating demographic parameters of populations in patches situated in three landscapes differing in the total amount of remaining forest, we tested the hypotheses that patch-area effects on population density are apparent only at intermediate levels of forest cover, and that immigration rates into forest patches are defined primarily by landscape context surrounding patches. As expected, we observed a positive patch-area effect on M. incanus density only within the landscape with intermediate forest cover. Density was independent of patch size in the most forested landscape and the species was absent from the most deforested landscape. Specifically, the mean estimated numbers of immigrants into small patches were lower in the landscape with intermediate forest cover compared to the most forested landscape.Conclusions/significanceOur results reveal the crucial importance of the total amount of remaining native vegetation for species persistence in fragmented landscapes, and specifically as to the role of variable immigration rates in providing the underlying mechanism that drives both patch-area effects and species extinction thresholds.

Project description:The pathogen and parasite community that inhabits every free-living organism can control host vital rates including lifespan and reproductive output. To date, however, there have been few experiments examining pathogen community assembly replicated at large-enough spatial scales to inform our understanding of pathogen dynamics in natural systems. Pathogen community assembly may be driven by neutral stochastic colonization and extinction events or by niche differentiation that constrains pathogen distributions to particular environmental conditions, hosts, or vectors. Here, we present results from a regionally-replicated experiment investigating the community of barley and cereal yellow dwarf viruses (B/CYDV's) in over 5000 experimentally planted individuals of six grass species along a 700 km latitudinal gradient along the Pacific coast of North America (USA) in response to experimentally manipulated nitrogen and phosphorus supplies. The composition of the virus community varied predictably among hosts and across nutrient-addition treatments, indicating niche differentiation among virus species. There were some concordant responses among the viral species. For example, the prevalence of most viral species increased consistently with perennial grass cover, leading to a 60% increase in the richness of the viral community within individual hosts (i.e., coinfection) in perennial-dominated plots. Furthermore, infection rates of the six host species in the field were highly correlated with vector preferences assessed in laboratory trials. Our results reveal the importance of niche differentiation in structuring virus assemblages. Virus species distributions reflected a combination of local host community composition, host species-specific vector preferences, and virus responses to host nutrition. In addition, our results suggest that heterogeneity among host species in their capacity to attract vectors or support pathogens between growing seasons can lead to positive covariation among virus species.

Dataset Information

Immigration rates and species niche characteristics affect the relationship between species richness and habitat heterogeneity in modeled meta-communities.

Publications

Immigration rates and species niche characteristics affect the relationship between species richness and habitat heterogeneity in modeled meta-communities.

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