Quantifying the dynamics of rocky intertidal sessile communities along the Pacific coast of Japan: implications for ecological resilience.

ABSTRACT: Long-term patterns in trajectories of natural communities provide insights into ecological resilience, but their assessment requires long-term census data. We analyzed 16-year census data for intertidal communities from 30 rocky shores along Japan's Pacific coast to assign community change to four possible trajectories (stable, reversible, abrupt, or linear) representing different aspects of ecological resilience, and to estimate multiple metrics of temporal invariability (species richness, species composition, and community abundance). We examined (1) how the prevalence of the four trajectories differs among regions, (2) how the features (model coefficients) of each trajectory vary among regions, and (3) how the temporal invariabilities differ among trajectories and regions. We found that

SUBMITTER: Ishida K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8352913 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature