TL;DR: This framework provides tools for examining trends at a variety of temporal scales, seasonal and beyond, and predicted that temporal beta diversity should be maximized in highly predictable and highly seasonal climates, and that low degrees of seasonality, predictability, or both would lower diversity in characteristic ways.
Abstract: Temporal environmental fluctuations, such as seasonality, exert strong controls on biodiversity. While the effects of seasonality are well known, the predictability of fluctuations across years may influence seasonality in ways that are less well understood. The ability of a habitat to support unique, non-nested assemblages of species at different times of the year should depend on both seasonality (occurrence of events at specific periods of the year) and predictability (the reliability of event recurrence) of characteristic ecological conditions. Drawing on tools from wavelet analysis and information theory, we developed a framework for quantifying both seasonality and predictability of habitats, and applied this using global long-term rainfall data. Our analysis predicted that temporal beta diversity should be maximized in highly predictable and highly seasonal climates, and that low degrees of seasonality, predictability, or both would lower diversity in characteristic ways. Using stream invertebrate communities as a case study, we demonstrated that temporal species diversity, as exhibited by community turnover, was determined by a balance between temporal environmental variability (seasonality) and the reliability of this variability (predictability). Communities in highly seasonal mediterranean environments exhibited strong oscillations in community structure, with turnover from one unique community type to another across seasons, whereas communities in aseasonal New Zealand environments fluctuated randomly. Understanding the influence of seasonal and other temporal scales of environmental oscillations on diversity is not complete without a clear understanding of their predictability, and our framework provides tools for examining these trends at a variety of temporal scales, seasonal and beyond. Given the uncertainty of future climates, seasonality and predictability are critical considerations for both basic science and management of ecosystems (e.g., dam operations, bioassessment) spanning gradients of climatic variability.
TL;DR: Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols used xiii 1.
Abstract: Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201
TL;DR: How flow variability influences long-term persistence of riverine assemblages is demonstrated, and researchers are disentangling the direct effects of flow on communities and ecosystem processes from its indirect effects (e.g., via species interactions, light-blocking turbidity).
Abstract: BACKGROUND Early civilizations developed around seasonal river floodplains, and the natural rhythm of rivers remains critical to humans today. We use streams and rivers to meet drinking water, irrigation, and hydropower needs by storing and moving water in complex ways, at the times and places of our choosing. Consequently, many of Earth’s rivers have flow regimes that are “unnatural” in magnitude, frequency, duration, and timing. The rise in river degradation globally has motivated research on the link between hydrologic alteration and declines in valued biota. At the same time, largely fueled by new technologies and methods, research has expanded to understand the patterns in, and drivers of, riverine processes like primary production, in both near-pristine and degraded rivers. A third line of research, stymied by how difficult it has been to restore degraded rivers, has called for process-based restoration, building on knowledge from the other two research thrusts. Today’s hydroecological science seeks to understand the mechanisms whereby flow regimes affect biota and ecosystem processes, and the interplay between them, in a three-way interaction we call the flow-biota-ecosystem processes nexus. ADVANCES By shifting the focus from static patterns at sites to dynamic processes along river networks, advances are being made to understand the interactions and feedbacks at the nexus. Fueled by increasingly available time-series data and novel modeling, emerging research ranges from studies on regime-based properties such as flow periodicity and its change, to studies on river network structure and associated spatial variation in flow and water chemistry. These studies demonstrate how flow variability influences long-term persistence of riverine assemblages, and they are disentangling the direct effects of flow on communities and ecosystem processes from its indirect effects (e.g., via species interactions, light-blocking turbidity). Changes in temporal patterns in flow magnitudes can increase risk of community collapse and alter key ecosystem processes such as primary production. Growing research shows that storm flows not only enhance inputs and downstream export of terrestrially derived carbon to rivers but, when associated with sustained hydrologic connectivity with soils, exert particular influence on water chemistry and biogeochemical processes that can influence food webs. Increased availability of environmental sensors has stimulated research, showing that extreme flows may impart disproportionate impacts on stream metabolism, but the relationship can depend on the predictability of those flows. Research combining changes in flow patterns with stable isotope analyses is revealing how temporal fluctuations in habitat, and in the quality and quantity of basal resources, influence trophic pathways and resulting food-web structure. Evidence suggests that restoring particular facets of a flow regime can produce desirable conservation outcomes, but context is paramount. Restoration actions going beyond discrete flow events and enhancing groundwater-influenced river habitat or redirecting subsurface flow paths may be critical in future climates. OUTLOOK Our understanding of the flow-biota-ecosystem processes nexus is still incomplete and is a frontier research topic. Challenges include connecting organismal and ecosystem-level processes, and understanding the role of microbial communities as intermediaries. Capturing the effects of watershed-level physical and biogeochemical heterogeneity, and parsing out direct, indirect, or cascading effects of flow alteration on biota and processes would also reduce uncertainty in restoration outcomes, particularly in novel, nonstationary environments. Understanding how much flow restoration alone can achieve in urban watersheds is an urgent need, as is translating findings from hydroecology to design green infrastructure and flow release programs from reservoirs. These management tools may offer growing opportunities to experiment with flow regimes, which will assist in refining process-based river restoration. Both solid science, and effective translation into practice will be needed to curb the fast pace of global river ecosystem degradation.
TL;DR: A conceptual model is developed that predicts that the explanatory power of the river network peaks in mesic systems for obligate aquatic dispersers, and proposes directions of future avenues of research, including the use of manipulative field and laboratory experiments that test metacommunity theory in river networks.
Abstract: River networks are hierarchical dendritic habitats embedded within the terrestrial landscape, with varying connectivity between sites depending on their positions along the network. This physical organisation influences the dispersal of organisms, which ultimately affects metacommunity dynamics and biodiversity patterns.
We provide a conceptual synthesis of the role of river networks in structuring metacommunities in relation to dispersal processes in riverine ecosystems. We explore where the river network best explains observed metacommunity structure compared to other measurements of physical connectivity. We mostly focus on invertebrates, but also consider other taxonomic groups, including microbes, fishes, plants, and amphibians.
Synthesising studies that compared multiple spatial distance metrics, we found that the importance of the river network itself in explaining metacommunity patterns depended on a variety of factors, including dispersal mode (aquatic versus aerial versus terrestrial) and landscape type (arid versus mesic), as well as location-specific factors, such as network connectivity, land use, topographic heterogeneity, and biotic interactions. The river network appears to be less important for strong aerial dispersers and insects in arid systems than for other groups and biomes, but there is considerable variability. Borrowing from other literature, particularly landscape genetics, we developed a conceptual model that predicts that the explanatory power of the river network peaks in mesic systems for obligate aquatic dispersers.
We propose directions of future avenues of research, including the use of manipulative field and laboratory experiments that test metacommunity theory in river networks. While field and laboratory experiments have their own benefits and drawbacks (e.g. reality, control, cost), both are powerful approaches for understanding the mechanisms structuring metacommunities, by teasing apart dispersal and niche-related factors.
Finally, improving our knowledge of dispersal in river networks will benefit from expanding the breadth of cost-distance modelling to better infer dispersal from observational data; an improved understanding of life-history strategies rather than relying on independent traits; exploring individual-level variation in dispersal through detailed genetic studies; detailed studies on fine-scale environmental (e.g. daily hydrology) and organismal spatiotemporal variability; and synthesising comparative, experimental, and theoretical work. Expanding in these areas will help to push the current state of the science from a largely pattern-detection mode into a new phase of more mechanistically driven research.
250 citations
Cites background from "Seasonality and predictability shap..."
...For instance, 446 Tonkin et al. (2017b) found greater dispersal limitation in metacommunities with individual 447 communities split across different branches separated by clear overland dispersal barriers in 448 Himalayan streams....
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...IB), which 1464 includes any rise and fall in elevation along a straight line path (Tonkin et al., 2017b)....
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...Tonkin et al. (2017b)
Community, niche position, niche breadth
Nepalese Himalaya
Euclidean, topographic, watercourse
Variable between three datasets depending on spatial arrangement of sites....
TL;DR: In this article, the main biodiversity patterns and ecological features, human impacts on the system and environmental issues, and discuss ways to use this information to improve stewardship are identified, and the authors consider all main types of natural and artificial inland freshwater habitas (fwh).
Abstract: In this overview (introductory article to a special issue including 14 papers), we consider all main types of natural and artificial inland freshwater habitas (fwh). For each type, we identify the main biodiversity patterns and ecological features, human impacts on the system and environmental issues, and discuss ways to use this information to improve stewardship. Examples of selected key biodiversity/ecological features (habitat type): narrow endemics, sensitive (groundwater and GDEs); crenobionts, LIHRes (springs); unidirectional flow, nutrient spiraling (streams); naturally turbid, floodplains, large-bodied species (large rivers); depth-variation in benthic communities (lakes); endemism and diversity (ancient lakes); threatened, sensitive species (oxbow lakes, SWE); diverse, reduced littoral (reservoirs); cold-adapted species (Boreal and Arctic fwh); endemism, depauperate (Antarctic fwh); flood pulse, intermittent wetlands, biggest river basins (tropical fwh); variable hydrologic regime—periods of drying, flash floods (arid-climate fwh). Selected impacts: eutrophication and other pollution, hydrologic modifications, overexploitation, habitat destruction, invasive species, salinization. Climate change is a threat multiplier, and it is important to quantify resistance, resilience, and recovery to assess the strategic role of the different types of freshwater ecosystems and their value for biodiversity conservation. Effective conservation solutions are dependent on an understanding of connectivity between different freshwater ecosystems (including related terrestrial, coastal and marine systems).
181 citations
Cites background from "Seasonality and predictability shap..."
...[473] found that Mediterranean streams had a significantly higher temporal turnover as a result of the highly predictable seasonality that generates unique communities for each season....
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...This is shown by the high temporal turnover of aquatic macroinvertebrate assemblages between seasons [473]....
TL;DR: It is found that maintaining floods under future climates will be needed to overcome the negative long-term consequences of flow modification on riverine ecosystems, and it is shown that even small modifications can have consequences for the structure of riparian plant networks.
Abstract: Riverine ecosystems are governed by patterns of temporal variation in river flows. This dynamism will change due to climate change and the near-ubiquitous human control of river flows globally, which may have severe effects on species distributions and interactions. We employed a combination of population modelling and network theory to explore the consequences of possible flow regime futures on riparian plant communities, including scenarios of increased drought, flooding and flow homogenization (removal of flow variability). We found that even slight modifications to the historic natural flow regime had significant consequences for the structure of riparian plant networks. Networks of emergent interactions between plant guilds were most connected at the natural flow regime and became simplified with increasing flow alteration. The most influential component of flow alteration was flood reduction, with drought and flow homogenization both having greater simplifying community-wide consequences than increased flooding. These findings suggest that maintaining floods under future climates will be needed to overcome the negative long-term consequences of flow modification on riverine ecosystems.
TL;DR: Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols used xiii 1.
Abstract: Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201
TL;DR: In this article, a step-by-step guide to wavelet analysis is given, with examples taken from time series of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
Abstract: A practical step-by-step guide to wavelet analysis is given, with examples taken from time series of the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The guide includes a comparison to the windowed Fourier transform, the choice of an appropriate wavelet basis function, edge effects due to finite-length time series, and the relationship between wavelet scale and Fourier frequency. New statistical significance tests for wavelet power spectra are developed by deriving theoretical wavelet spectra for white and red noise processes and using these to establish significance levels and confidence intervals. It is shown that smoothing in time or scale can be used to increase the confidence of the wavelet spectrum. Empirical formulas are given for the effect of smoothing on significance levels and confidence intervals. Extensions to wavelet analysis such as filtering, the power Hovmoller, cross-wavelet spectra, and coherence are described. The statistical significance tests are used to give a quantitative measure of change...
TL;DR: The commonly observed high diversity of trees in tropical rain forests and corals on tropical reefs is a nonequilibrium state which, if not disturbed further, will progress toward a low-diversity equilibrium community as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The commonly observed high diversity of trees in tropical rain forests and corals on tropical reefs is a nonequilibrium state which, if not disturbed further, will progress toward a low-diversity equilibrium community. This may not happen if gradual changes in climate favor different species. If equilibrium is reached, a lesser degree of diversity may be sustained by niche diversification or by a compensatory mortality that favors inferior competitors. However, tropical forests and reefs are subject to severe disturbances often enough that equilibrium may never be attained.
TL;DR: Two different procedures for effecting a frequency analysis of a time-dependent signal locally in time are studied and the notion of time-frequency localization is made precise, within this framework, by two localization theorems.
Abstract: Two different procedures for effecting a frequency analysis of a time-dependent signal locally in time are studied. The first procedure is the short-time or windowed Fourier transform; the second is the wavelet transform, in which high-frequency components are studied with sharper time resolution than low-frequency components. The similarities and the differences between these two methods are discussed. For both schemes a detailed study is made of the reconstruction method and its stability as a function of the chosen time-frequency density. Finally, the notion of time-frequency localization is made precise, within this framework, by two localization theorems. >
6,180 citations
"Seasonality and predictability shap..." refers methods in this paper
...Wavelet analysis (Box 1) can be employed to quantify the
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predictability of periodic phenomena such as rainy and dry seasons (Daubechies 1990, Torrence and Compo 1998)....
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...Wavelet analysis has been used for a variety of applications in ecology and other fields (Daubechies 1990, Cazelles et al. 2008), such as comparing compensatory
Box 1....