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Experimental evaluation of biodiversity response to dispersal barriers and patch primary producer biomass in Mediterranean streams

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Abstract

Diversity at the local scale is determined by different, and often interacting factors. One factor that is suggested to be important in determining community structure is productivity, which is related to diversity. Though this relationship might depend on different factors, a hump-shaped, U-shaped or positive linear relationship seems to be frequent at the local scale. On the other hand, the concept of metacommunity considers how several communities are linked through dispersal. Here, we experimentally assessed how primary producer biomass and dispersal barriers drive diversity at the local scale in Mediterranean streams. We did this by creating a reach scale study system that resembled a metacommunity. We found that higher primary producer biomass promotes a saturating relationship with diversity. However, we did not detect any effect of the dispersal barriers on the responses. Thus, our results show that, at the local scale, patch primary producer biomass plays a more important role in determining the community structure and colonization than dispersal barriers. In the framework of metacommunity theory, our study system can be explained by combining assumptions of the “Mass-Effects” and the “Species-Sorting” archetypes, supporting a non-exclusive view of these hypotheses.

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Acknowledgements

Authors are very grateful for the comments and the English grammar review of Dr. Christle Coxon and Prof. Anne Robertson, and for all the suggestions of three anonymous reviewers, who improved the previous version of this manuscript. The study was supported by a University of Granada project within the program “Proyectos de investigación precompetitivos del Plan Propio 2014”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, 18071, Granada, Spain

    Manuel Jesús López-Rodríguez, Isabel Paz Moreno, Ignacio Peralta-Maraver & Carmen Pérez-Martínez

  2. Department of Life Sciences, Roehampton University, London, UK

    Ignacio Peralta-Maraver

  3. Departamento de Zoología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain

    José Manuel Tierno de Figueroa

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  1. Manuel Jesús López-Rodríguez
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Correspondence to Manuel Jesús López-Rodríguez.

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López-Rodríguez, M.J., Paz Moreno, I., Peralta-Maraver, I. et al. Experimental evaluation of biodiversity response to dispersal barriers and patch primary producer biomass in Mediterranean streams. Aquat Sci 83, 1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-020-00757-5

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