Dataset Information

Effective dispersal and density-dependence in mesophotic macroalgal forests: Insights from the Mediterranean species Cystoseira zosteroides.

ABSTRACT: Dispersal and recruitment are fundamental processes for population recovery following disturbances in sessile species. While both processes are well understood for many terrestrial species, they still remain poorly resolved for some macroalgal species. Here we experimentally investigated the effective dispersal and recruit survival of a mesophotic Mediterranean fucoid, Cystoseira zosteroides. In three isolated populations, four sets of settlement collectors were placed at increasing distances (from 0 to 10 m) and different orientations (North, South, East and West). We observed that effective dispersal was restricted to populations' vicinity, with an average of 6.43 m and not further than 13.33 m, following a Weibull distribution. During their first year of life, survival was up to 50%, but it was lower underneath the adult canopy, suggesting a negative density-dependence. To put our results in a broader context we compared the effective dispersal of other fucoid and kelp species reported in the literature, which confirmed the low dispersal ability of brown algae, in particular for fucoids, with an effective dispersal of few meters. Given the importance of recruitment for the persistence and recovery of populations after disturbances, these results underline the vulnerability of C. zosteroides and other fucoid species to escalating threats.

SUBMITTER: Capdevila P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5766243 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effective dispersal and density-dependence in mesophotic macroalgal forests: Insights from the Mediterranean species Cystoseira zosteroides.

Capdevila Pol P Linares Cristina C Aspillaga Eneko E Riera Joan Lluís JL Hereu Bernat B

PloS one 20180112 1

Dispersal and recruitment are fundamental processes for population recovery following disturbances in sessile species. While both processes are well understood for many terrestrial species, they still remain poorly resolved for some macroalgal species. Here we experimentally investigated the effective dispersal and recruit survival of a mesophotic Mediterranean fucoid, Cystoseira zosteroides. In three isolated populations, four sets of settlement collectors were placed at increasing distances (f ...[more]

PMID: 29329336

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Project description:BackgroundPlant recruitment depends among other factors on environmental conditions and their variation at different spatial scales. Characterizing dispersal in contrasting environments may thus be necessary to understand natural intraspecific variation in the processes underlying recruitment. Silene ciliata and Armeria caespitosa are two representative species of cryophilic pastures above the tree line in Mediterranean high mountains. No explicit estimations of dispersal kernels have been made so far for these or other high-mountain plants. Such data could help to predict their dispersal and recruitment patterns in a context of changing environments under ongoing global warming.MethodsWe used an inverse modelling approach to analyse effective seed dispersal patterns in five populations of both Silene ciliata and Armeria caespitosa along an altitudinal gradient in Sierra de Guadarrama (Madrid, Spain). We considered four commonly employed two-dimensional seedling dispersal kernels exponential-power, 2Dt, WALD and log-normal.Key resultsNo single kernel function provided the best fit across all populations, although estimated mean dispersal distances were short (<1 m) in all cases. S. ciliata did not exhibit significant among-population variation in mean dispersal distance, whereas significant differences in mean dispersal distance were found in A. caespitosa. Both S. ciliata and A. caespitosa exhibited among-population variation in the fecundity parameter and lacked significant variation in kernel shape.ConclusionsThis study illustrates the complexity of intraspecific variation in the processes underlying recruitment, showing that effective dispersal kernels can remain relatively invariant across populations within particular species, even if there are strong variations in demographic structure and/or physical environment among populations, while the invariant dispersal assumption may not hold for other species in the same environment. Our results call for a case-by-case analysis in a wider range of plant taxa and environments to assess the prevalence and magnitude of intraspecific dispersal variation.

Dataset Information

Effective dispersal and density-dependence in mesophotic macroalgal forests: Insights from the Mediterranean species Cystoseira zosteroides.

Publications

Effective dispersal and density-dependence in mesophotic macroalgal forests: Insights from the Mediterranean species Cystoseira zosteroides.

Similar Datasets

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