10.5061/DRYAD.4B8GTHTBS
Forsblom, Louise
Finnish Environment Institute
Finnish Environment Institute
Lindén, Andreas
0000-0002-5548-2671
Natural Resources Institute Finland
Natural Resources Institute Finland
Engström-Öst, Jonna
Novia University of Applied Sciences
Lehtiniemi, Maiju
0000-0003-4782-4958
Finnish Environment Institute
Finnish Environment Institute
Bonsdorff, Erik
0000-0001-5070-4880
Åbo Akademi University
Åbo Akademi University
Identifying biotic drivers of population dynamics in a benthic–pelagic
community
Dryad
dataset
2021
2022-04-13T00:00:00Z
2022-04-13T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7298
10966 bytes
3
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Benthic species and communities are linked to pelagic zooplankton through
life-stages encompassing both benthic and pelagic habitats and through a
mutual dependency on primary producers as a food source. Many zooplankton
taxa contribute to the sedimentary system as benthic eggs. Our main aim
was to investigate the nature of the population level biotic interactions
between and within these two seemingly independent communities, both
dependent on the pelagic primary production, while simultaneously
accounting for environmental drivers (salinity, temperature and oxygen
conditions). To this end we applied multivariate autoregressive
state-space models to long (1966–2007) time-series of annual abundance
data, comparing models with and without interspecific interactions, as
well as models with and without environmental variables included. We were
not able to detect any direct coupling between sediment-dwelling benthic
taxa and pelagic copepods and cladocerans on the annual scale, but the
most parsimonious model indicated that interactions within the benthic
community are important. There were also positive residual correlations
between the copepods and cladocerans potentially reflecting the
availability of a shared resource or similar seasonal dependence, whereas
both groups tended to correlate negatively with the zoobenthic taxa. The
most notable single interaction within the benthic community was a
tendency for a negative effect of Limecola balthica on the amphipods
Monoporeia affinis and Pontoporeia femorata, which can help explain the
observed decrease of amphipods due to increased competitive interference.
The data consist of field data on zooplankton abundances gathered during
2016, as well as the time-series used for the community model described in
the paper.