Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Predicting occupancy and abundance by niche position, niche breadth and body size in stream organisms

  • Community ecology – original research
  • Published:
Oecologia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The regional occupancy and local abundance of species are thought to be strongly correlated to their body size, niche breadth and niche position. The strength of the relationships among these variables can also differ between different organismal groups. Here, we analyzed data on stream diatoms and insects from a high-latitude drainage basin to investigate these relationships. To generate measures of niche position and niche breadth for each species, we used sets of local environmental and catchment variables separately, applying the outlying mean index analysis. Beta regression and negative binomial generalized linear models were run to predict regional occupancy and mean local abundance, respectively. We found a positive occupancy–abundance relationship in both diatoms and insects, and that niche-based variables were the main predictors of variation in regional occupancy and local abundance. This finding was mainly due to local environmental niche position, whereas the effects of niche breadth on regional occupancy and local abundance were less important. We also found a relationship between body size and local abundance or regional occupancy of diatoms. Our results thus add to current macroecological research by emphasizing the strong importance of niche position rather than niche breadth and body size for regional occupancy and local abundance in rarely studied organisms (e.g., diatoms and insects) and ecosystems (i.e., wilderness streams).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Beven KJ, Kirkby MJ (1979) A physically based, variable contributing area model of basin hydrology. Hydrolog Sci Bull 24:43–69

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn TM, Gaston KJ, Quinn RM, Arnold H, Gregory RD (1997) Of mice and wrens: the relation between abundance and geographic range size in British mammals and birds. Philos Trans R Soc Ser B 352:419–427

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn TM, Cassey P, Gaston KJ (2006) Variations on a theme: sources of heterogeneity in the form of the interspecific relationship between abundance and distribution. J Anim Ecol 75:1426–1439

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Borregaard MK, Rahbek C (2010) Causality of the relationship between geographic distribution and species abundance. Q Rev Biol 85:3–25

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Brown JH (1984) On the relationship between abundance and distribution of species. Am Nat 124:255–279

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown JH, Maurer BA (1987) Evolution of species assemblages: effects of energetic constraints and species dynamics on the diversification of the North American avifauna. Am Nat 130:1–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown JH, Maurer BA (1989) Macroecology: the division of food and space among species on continents. Science 243:1145–1150

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Burnham KP, Anderson DR (2002) Model selection and multimodel inference: a practical information-theoretic approach. Colorado State University, Fort Collins

    Google Scholar 

  • Chessel D, Dufour AB and Dray S (2012) ADE-4: analysis of ecological data. exploratory and euclidean methods in environmental sciences. In: http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ADE4. Accessed 22 Sep 2016

  • Corkum LD (1992) Spatial distribution patterns of macroinvertebrates along rivers within and among biomes. Hydrobiologia 239:101–114

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cowley MJR, Thomas CD, Wilson RJ, Léon-Cortés JL, Gutiérrez D, Bulman CR (2001) Density-distribution relationships in British butterflies: II. An assessment of mechanisms. J Anim Ecol 70:426–441

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crist EP, Cicone RC (1984) A physically-based transformation of thematic mapper data—the TM tasseled cap. IEEE Trans. Geiosci Remote Sens 3:256–263

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doledéc S, Chessel D, Gimaret-Carpentier C (2000) Niche separation in community analysis: a new method. Ecology 81:2914–2927

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Felsenstein J (1985) Phylogenies and the comparative method. Am Nat 125:1–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ferrari SLP, Cribari-Neto F (2004) Beta Regression for modelling rates and proportions. J. Appl. Stat. 31(7):799–815

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaston KJ (1994) Rarity. Chapman & Hall, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gaston KJ, Blackburn TM (2000) Pattern and process in macroecology. Blackwell, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gaston KJ, Blackburn TM, Gregory RD, Greenwood JJD (1998) The anatomy of the interspecific abundance-range size relationship for the British avifauna: I. Spatial patterns Ecol Lett 1:38–46

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaston KJ, Blackburn TM, Greenwood JJD, Gregory RD, Quinn RM, Lawton JH (2000) Abundance-occupancy relationships. J Appl Ecol 37:39–59

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gregory RD, Gaston KJ (2000) Explanations for commonness and rarity in British breeding birds: separating resource use and resource availability. Oikos 88:515–526

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hanski I, Kouki K, Halkka A (1993) Three explanations of the positive relationship between distribution and abundance of species. In: Ricklefs RE, Schluter D (eds) Species diversity in ecological communities: historical and geographical perspectives. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 108–116

    Google Scholar 

  • Heino J (2005) Positive relationship between regional distribution and local abundance in stream insects: a consequence of niche breadth or niche position? Ecography 28:345–354

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heino J (2013) Environmental heterogeneity, dispersal mode and co-occurrence in stream macroinvertebrates. Ecol Evol 3:344–355

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Heino J, de Mendoza G (2016) Predictability of stream insect distributions is dependent on niche position, but not on biological traits or taxonomic relatedness of species. Ecography 39:001–011

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heino J, Gönroos M (2014) Untangling the relationships among regional occupancy, species traits, and niche characteristics in stream invertebrates. Ecol Evol 4:1931–1942

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Heino J, Soininen J (2006) Regional occupancy in unicellular eukaryotes: a reflection of niche breadth, habitat availability or size-related dispersal capacity? Freshw Biol 5:672–685

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heino J, Virtanen R (2006) Relationships between distribution and abundance vary with spatial scale and ecological group in stream bryophytes. Freshw Biol 51:1879–1889

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hjort J, Luoto M (2006) Modelling patterned ground distribution in Finnish Lapland: an integration of topographical, ground and remote sensing information. Geogr Ann 88:19–29

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffsten PO (2004) Site-occupancy in relation to flight morphology in caddisflies. Freshw Biol 49:810–817

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holt AR, Gaston KJ (2003) Interspecific abundance–occupancy relationships of British mammals and birds: is it possible to explain the residual variation? Glob Ecol Biogeogr 12:37–46

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hurlbert AH, White EP (2007) Ecological correlates of geographical range occupancy in North American birds. Glob Ecol Biogeogr 16:764–773

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hutchinson GE (1957) Concluding remarks. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 22:145–159

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hutchinson GE, MacArthur RH (1959) A theoretical ecological model of size distributions among species of animals. Am Nat 93:117–125

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hynes HBN (1970) The Ecology of Running Waters. University of Toronto Press, Toronto

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins DG, Brescacin CR, Duxbury CV, Elliott JA, Evans JA, Grablow KR, Hillegass M, Lyon BN, Metzger GA, Olandese ML, Pepe D, Silvers GA, Suresch HN, Thompson TN, Trexler CM, Williams GE, Williams NC, Williams SE (2007) Does size matter for dispersal distance? Glob Ecol Biogeogr 16:415–425

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson RK, Goedkoop W, Sandin L (2004) Spatial scale and ecological relationships between the macroinvertebrate communities of stony habitats of streams and lakes. Freshw Biol 49:1179–1194

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelly MG, Cazaubon A, Coring E, Dell’Uomo A, Ector L, Goldsmith B, Guasch H, Hürlimann J, Jarlman A, Kawecka B, Kwandrans J, Laugaste R, Lindstrom EA, Leitao M, Marvan P, Padisak J, Pipp E, Prygiel J, Rott E, Sabater S, Van Dam H, Vizinet J (1998) Recommendations for the routine sampling of diatoms for water quality assessments in Europe. J Appl Phycol 10:215–224

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luiz OJ, Madin JS, Robertson DR, Rocha LA, Wirtz P, Floeter SR (2012) Ecological traits influencing range expansion across large oceanic dispersal barriers: insights from tropical Atlantic reef fishes. Proc Roy Soc B 279:1033–1040

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGill B, Collins C (2003) A unified theory for macroecology based on spatial patterns of abundance. Evol Ecol Res 5:469–492

    Google Scholar 

  • Mykrä H, Ruokonen T, Muotka T (2006) The effect of sample duration on the efficiency of kick-sampling in two streams with contrasting substratum heterogeneity. Verh Internat Verein Limnol 29:1351–1355

    Google Scholar 

  • National Board of Waters and the Environment (1981) Vesihallinnonanalyysimenetelmät. Publ Nat Board Wat Finland Report 213:1–136

    Google Scholar 

  • National Land Survey of Finland (2000c) Digital elevation model. PaITuli spatial data service. In: https://research.csc.fi/paituli. Accessed 15 July 2016

  • National Land Survey of Finland (2010a) Basic map 1: 20 000. PaITuli spatial data service. In: https://research.csc.fi/paituli. Accessed 15 July 2016

  • National Land Survey of Finland (2010b) Topographic database 1: 10 000. PaITuli spatial data service. In: https://research.csc.fi/paituli. Accessed 15 July 2016

  • Passy SI (2007) Differential cell size optimization strategies produce distinct diatom richness–body size relationships in stream benthos and plankton. J Ecol 95:745–754

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Passy SI (2012) A hierarchical theory of macroecology. Ecol Lett 15:923–934

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Poff NL (1997) Landscape filters and species traits: towards mechanistic understanding and prediction in stream ecology. J North Am Benthol Soc 16:391–409

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R Core Team (2013) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna. Available at: http://www.R-project.org/. Accessed 10 June 2016

  • Rimet F, Bouchez A (2012) Life-forms, cell-sizes and ecological guilds of diatoms in European rivers. Knowl Manag Aquat Ecosyst 406:1–14

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saito VS, Soininen J, Fonseca Gessner AA, Siqueira T (2015) Dispersal traits drive the phylogenetic distance decay of similarity in neotropical stream metacommunities. J Biogeogr 42:2101–2111

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sandin L, Johnson RK (2004) Local, landscape and regional factors structuring benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages in Swedish streams. Landscape Ecol 19:501–514

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmera D, Eros T, Heino J (2013) Habitat filtering determines spatial variation of macroinvertebrate community traits in northern headwater streams. Comm Ecol 14:77–88

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • SFS-EN 14407 (2005) Water quality. Guidance standard for the identification, enumeration and interpretation of benthic diatom samples from running waters. Suomen standardisoimisliitto SFS ry, Helsinki

    Google Scholar 

  • Siqueira T, Bini LM, Cianciaruso MV, Roque FO, Trivinho-Strixino S (2009) The role of niche measures in explaining the abundance-distribution relationship in tropical lotic chironomids. Hydrobiologia 636:163–172

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Slatyer RA, Hirst M, Sexton JS (2013) Niche breadth predicts geographical range size: a general ecological pattern. Ecol Lett 16:1104–1114

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Snoeijs P, Busse S, Potapova M (2002) The importance of diatom size in community analysis. J Phycol 38:265–272

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Soininen J, Heino J (2005) Relationships between local population persistence, local abundance and regional occupancy of species: patterns in diatoms of boreal streams. J Biogeogr 32:1971–1978

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Soininen J, Bartels P, Heino J, Luoto M, Hillebrand H (2015) Toward more integrated ecosystem research in aquatic and terrestrial environments. Bioscience 216:1–9

    Google Scholar 

  • Tachet H, Richoux P, Bourneau M, Usseglio-Polatera P (2010) Freshwater Invertebrates, Systematics, Biology, Ecology. CNRS Editions, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Tales E, Keith P, Oberdorff T (2004) Density-range size relationship in French riverine fishes. Oecologia 138:360–370

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tolonen KE, Leinonen K, Marttila H, Erkinaro J, Heino J (2017) Environmental predictability of taxonomic and functional community composition in high-latitude streams. Freshw Biol 62:1–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tonkin JD, Arimoro FO, Haase P (2016) Exploring stream communities in a tropical biodiversity hotspot: biodiversity, regional occupancy, niche characteristics and environmental correlates. Biodivers Conserv 25:975–993

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Venier LA, Fahrig L (1996) Habitat availability causes the species distribution-abundance relationship. Oikos 76:564–570

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vinson MR, Hawkins CP (1998) Biodiversity of stream insects: variation at local, basin, and regional spatial scales. Annu Rev Entomol 43:271–293

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wentworth CK (1992) A scale of grade and class terms for clastic sediments. J Geology 30:377–392

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White EP, Ernest SKM, Kerkhoff AJ, Enquist BJ (2007) Relationships between body size and abundance in ecology. TREE 22:323–330

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wrona FJ, Reist JD, Amundsen Arne, Chambers PA, Christoffersen K, Culp JM, di Cenzo PD, Forsström L, Hammar J, Heino J, Heikkinen RK, Kahilainen KK, Lesack L, Lehtonen H, Lento J, Luoto M, Marsh P, Marcogliese DJ, Moquin PA, Mustonen T, Prowse TD, Power M, Rautio M, Swanson H, Thompson M, Toivonen H, Vasiliev V, Virkkala R, Zavalko S (2013) Freshwater ecosystems. In: Meltofte H (ed) Arctic Biodiversity Assessment. Status and Trends in Arctic Biodiversity. Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna, Arctic Council, Iceland, pp 335–377

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeileis A, Kleiber C, Jackman S (2008) Regression models for count data in R. J Stat Software 27:1–25

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

MPR would like to thank CAPES Foundation-Brazil for her full PhD grant acquired and also thank Finnish Environment Institute for receiving her as a visiting researcher. We thank Sirkku Lehtinen, Olli-Matti Kärnä and Laura Tokola for assisting with field sampling, and Sylvain Doledéc, Jari Ilmonen and Lauri Paasivirta for insect body size information. Lauri Paasivirta identified the larvae of non-biting midges and Jari Ilmonen those of blackflies. We thank Olli-Matti Kärnä for providing the map of the study area.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geography Research Unit, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 3000, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Mariana P. Rocha, Jan Hjort & Marja Lindholm

  2. Biodiversity, Natural Environment Centre, Finnish Environment Institute, P.O. Box 413, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Mariana P. Rocha & Jani Heino

  3. Department of Ecology (ICB), Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG), Goiânia, GO, 74690-900, Brazil

    Luis M. Bini

  4. Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Rio Claro, P.O. Box 199, São Paulo, Brazil

    Tadeu Siqueira

  5. Department of Environmental Sciences, Section of Environmental Ecology, University of Helsinki, Niemenkatu 73, 15140, Lahti, Finland

    Mira Grönroos

  6. Freshwater Center, Finnish Environment Institute, P.O. Box 413, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Satu-Maaria Karjalainen

  7. CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil, Brasília, 70040-020, Brazil

    Mariana P. Rocha

Authors
  1. Mariana P. Rocha
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Luis M. Bini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Tadeu Siqueira
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Jan Hjort
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Mira Grönroos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Marja Lindholm
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Satu-Maaria Karjalainen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Jani Heino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

MPR and JH conceived the main ideas and led the writing of the manuscript. LMB and TS contributed to the statistical analyses and writing of the manuscript. JH contributed to gathering the catchment variables and commented on the manuscript. MG led the field sampling and identification of insect samples. ML and SMK did the identification of diatom samples. All authors commented on and approved the final manuscript version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mariana P. Rocha.

Ethics declarations

Funding

MPR is funded by thank CAPES Foundation-Brazil (Grant number 11877-13-8). TS is funded by Grant #2013/50424-1, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). Work by LMB have been continuously supported by CNPq Productivity Grants and is developed in the context of National Institutes for Science and Technology (INCT) in Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity Conservation, supported by MCTIC/CNPq (proc. 465610/2014-5) and FAPEG. This study was also supported by grants from the Academy of Finland to JHeino and JHjort.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Communicated by Bryan Brown.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 1277 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rocha, M.P., Bini, L.M., Siqueira, T. et al. Predicting occupancy and abundance by niche position, niche breadth and body size in stream organisms. Oecologia 186, 205–216 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-017-3988-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-017-3988-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation