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An anthropogenic habitat within a suboptimal colonized ecosystem provides improved conditions for a range-shifting species.

ABSTRACT: Many species are shifting their ranges in response to the changing climate. In cases where such shifts lead to the colonization of a new ecosystem, it is critical to establish how the shifting species itself is impacted by novel environmental and biological interactions. Anthropogenic habitats that are analogous to the historic habitat of a shifting species may play a crucial role in the ability of that species to expand or persist in suboptimal colonized ecosystems. We tested if the anthropogenic habitat of docks, a likely mangrove analog, provides improved conditions for the range-shifting mangrove tree crab Aratus pisonii within the colonized suboptimal salt marsh ecosystem. To test if docks provided an improved habitat, we compared the impact of the salt marsh and dock habitats on ecological and life history traits that influence the ability of this species to persist and expand into the salt marsh and compared these back to baselines in the historic mangrove ecosystem. Specifically, we examined behavior, physiology, foraging, and the thermal conditions of A. pisonii in each habitat. We found that docks provide a more favorable thermal and foraging habitat than the surrounding salt marsh, while their ability to provide conditions which improved behavior and physiology was mixed. Our study shows that anthropogenic habitats can act as analogs to historic ecosystems and enhance the habitat quality for range-shifting species in colonized suboptimal ecosystems. If the patterns that we document are general across systems, then anthropogenic habitats may play an important facilitative role in the range shifts of species with continued climate change.

SUBMITTER: Cannizzo ZJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5792588 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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An anthropogenic habitat within a suboptimal colonized ecosystem provides improved conditions for a range-shifting species.

Cannizzo Zachary J ZJ Dixon Sara R SR Griffen Blaine D BD

Ecology and evolution 20180101 3

Many species are shifting their ranges in response to the changing climate. In cases where such shifts lead to the colonization of a new ecosystem, it is critical to establish how the shifting species itself is impacted by novel environmental and biological interactions. Anthropogenic habitats that are analogous to the historic habitat of a shifting species may play a crucial role in the ability of that species to expand or persist in suboptimal colonized ecosystems. We tested if the anthropogen ...[more]

PMID: 29435229

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Project description:Recovery of an ecosystem following disturbance can be severely hampered or even shift altogether when a point disturbance exceeds a certain spatial threshold. Such scale-dependent dynamics may be caused by preemptive competition, but may also result from diminished self-facilitation due to weakened ecosystem engineering. Moreover, disturbance can facilitate colonization by engineering species that alter abiotic conditions in ways that exacerbate stress on the original species. Consequently, establishment of such counteracting engineers might reduce the spatial threshold for the disturbance, by effectively slowing recovery and increasing the risk for ecosystem shifts to alternative states. We tested these predictions in an intertidal mudflat characterized by a two-state mosaic of hummocks (humps exposed during low tide) dominated by the sediment-stabilizing seagrass Zostera noltii) and hollows (low-tide waterlogged depressions dominated by the bioturbating lugworm Arenicola marina). In contrast to expectations, seagrass recolonized both natural and experimental clearings via lateral expansion and seemed unaffected by both clearing size and lugworm addition. Near the end of the growth season, however, an additional disturbance (most likely waterfowl grazing and/or strong hydrodynamics) selectively impacted recolonizing seagrass in the largest (1 m(2)) clearings (regardless of lugworm addition), and in those medium (0.25 m(2)) clearings where lugworms had been added nearly five months earlier. Further analyses showed that the risk for the disturbance increased with hollow size, with a threshold of 0.24 m(2). Hollows of that size were caused by seagrass removal alone in the largest clearings, and by a weaker seagrass removal effect exacerbated by lugworm bioturbation in the medium clearings. Consequently, a sufficiently large disturbance increased the vulnerability of recolonizing seagrass to additional disturbance by weakening seagrass engineering effects (sediment stabilization). Meanwhile, the counteracting ecosystem engineering (lugworm bioturbation) reduced that threshold size. Therefore, scale-dependent interactions between habitat-mediated facilitation, competition and disturbance seem to maintain the spatial two-state mosaic in this ecosystem.

Dataset Information

An anthropogenic habitat within a suboptimal colonized ecosystem provides improved conditions for a range-shifting species.

Publications

An anthropogenic habitat within a suboptimal colonized ecosystem provides improved conditions for a range-shifting species.

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