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Climatic variables influence the temporal dynamics of an anuran metacommunity in a nonstationary way.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the temporal dynamics of communities is crucial to predict how communities respond to climate change. Several factors can promote variation in phenology among species, including tracking of seasonal resources, adaptive responses to other species, demographic stochasticity, and physiological constraints. The activities of ectothermic vertebrates are sensitive to climatic variations due to the effect of temperature and humidity on species physiology. However, most studies on temporal dynamics have analyzed multi-year data and do not have resolution to discriminate within-year patterns that can determine community assembly cycles. Here, we tested the temporal stability and synchrony of calling activity and also how climatic variables influence anuran species composition throughout the year in a metacommunity in the Atlantic Forest of southern Brazil. Using a multivariate method, we described how the relationship between species composition and climatic variables changes through time. The metacommunity showed a weak synchronous spatial pattern, meaning that species responded independently to environmental variation. Interestingly, species composition exhibited a nonstationary response to climate, suggesting that climate affects species composition differently depending on the season. The species-climate relationship was stronger during the spring, summer, and winter, mainly influenced by temperature, rainfall, and humidity. Thus, temporal community dynamics seem to be mediated by species life-history traits, in which independent fluctuations promote community stability in temporally varying environments.

SUBMITTER: Ceron K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7297772 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Climatic variables influence the temporal dynamics of an anuran metacommunity in a nonstationary way.

Ceron Karoline K Santana Diego J DJ Lucas Elaine M EM Zocche Jairo José JJ Provete Diogo B DB

Ecology and evolution 20200403 11

Understanding the temporal dynamics of communities is crucial to predict how communities respond to climate change. Several factors can promote variation in phenology among species, including tracking of seasonal resources, adaptive responses to other species, demographic stochasticity, and physiological constraints. The activities of ectothermic vertebrates are sensitive to climatic variations due to the effect of temperature and humidity on species physiology. However, most studies on temporal ...[more]

PMID: 32551048

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Project description:BackgroundAlthough malaria burden in Uganda has declined since 2009 following the scale-up of interventions, the disease is still the leading cause of hospitalization and death. Transmission remains high and is driven by suitable weather conditions. There is a real concern that intervention gains may be reversed by climatic changes in the country. In this study, we investigate the effects of climate on the spatio-temporal trends of malaria incidence in Uganda during 2013-2017.MethodsBayesian spatio-temporal negative binomial models were fitted on district-aggregated monthly malaria cases, reported by two age groups, defined by a cut-off age of 5?years. Weather data was obtained from remote sensing sources including rainfall, day land surface temperature (LSTD) and night land surface temperature (LSTN), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), altitude, land cover, and distance to water bodies. Spatial and temporal correlations were taken into account by assuming a conditional autoregressive and a first-order autoregressive process on district and monthly specific random effects, respectively. Fourier trigonometric functions modeled seasonal fluctuations in malaria transmission. The effects of climatic changes on the malaria incidence changes between 2013 and 2017 were estimated by modeling the difference in time varying climatic conditions at the two time points and adjusting for the effects of intervention coverage, socio-economic status and health seeking behavior.ResultsMalaria incidence declined steadily from 2013 to 2015 and then increased in 2016. The decrease was by over 38% and 20% in children <5?years and individuals ?5?years, respectively. Temporal trends depict a strong bi-annual seasonal pattern with two peaks during April-June and October-December. The annual average of rainfall, LSTD and LSTN increased by 3.7?mm, 2.2?°C and 1.0?°C, respectively, between 2013 and 2017, whereas NDVI decreased by 6.8%. On the one hand, the increase in LSTD and decrease in NDVI were associated with a reduction in the incidence decline. On the other hand, malaria interventions and treatment seeking behavior had reverse effects, that were stronger compared to the effects of climatic changes. Important interactions between interventions with NDVI and LSTD suggest a varying impact of interventions on malaria burden in different climatic conditions.ConclusionClimatic changes in Uganda during the last five years contributed to a favorable environment for malaria transmission, and had a detrimental effect on malaria reduction gains achieved through interventions scale-up efforts. The NMCP should create synergies with the National Meteorological Authority with an ultimate goal of developing a Malaria Early Warning System to mitigate adverse climatic change effects on malaria risk in the country.

Dataset Information

Climatic variables influence the temporal dynamics of an anuran metacommunity in a nonstationary way.

Publications

Climatic variables influence the temporal dynamics of an anuran metacommunity in a nonstationary way.

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