10.5061/DRYAD.6JK8H77
Benito, Xavier
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Fritz, Sherilyn C.
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Steinitz-Kannan, Miriam
Northern Kentucky University
Vélez, Maria I.
University of Regina
McGlue, Michael M.
University of Kentucky
Data from: Lake regionalization and diatom metacommunity structuring in
tropical South America
Dryad
dataset
2019
diatom guilds
topographic heterogeneity
latitudinal gradient
Holocene
2019-06-28T00:00:00Z
2019-06-28T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4305
1813900 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Lakes and their topological distribution across Earth’s surface impose
ecological and evolutionary constraints on aquatic metacommunities. In
this study, we group similar lake ecosystems as metacommunity units
influencing diatom community structure. We assembled a database of 195
lakes from the tropical Andes and adjacent lowlands (8ºN–30ºS and 58–79ºW)
with associated environmental predictors to examine diatom metacommunity
patterns at two different levels: taxon and functional (deconstructed
species matrix by ecological guilds). We also derived spatial variables
that inherently assessed the relative role of dispersal. Using
complementary multivariate statistical techniques (Principal Component
Analysis, cluster analysis, non-metric multidimensional scaling,
Procrustes, variance partitioning), we examined diatom-environment
relationships among different lake habitats (sediment surface, periphyton
and plankton) and partitioned community variation to evaluate the
influence of niche- and dispersal-based assembly processes in diatom
metacommunity structure across lake clusters. The results showed a
significant association between geographic clusters of lakes based on
gradients of climate and landscape configuration and diatom assemblages.
Six lake clusters distributed along a latitudinal gradient were identified
as functional metacommunity units for diatom communities. Variance
partitioning revealed that dispersal mechanisms were a major contributor
to diatom metacommunity structure, but in a highly context-dependent
fashion across lake clusters. In the Andean Altiplano and adjacent
lowlands of Bolivia, diatom metacommunities are niche assembled but
constrained by either dispersal limitation or mass effects, resulting from
area, environmental heterogeneity, and ecological guild relationships.
Topographic heterogeneity played an important role in structuring planktic
diatom metacommunities. We emphasize the value of a guild-based
metacommunity model linked to dispersal for elucidating mechanisms
underlying latitudinal gradients in distribution. Our findings reveal the
importance of shifts in ecological drivers across climatic and
physiographically distinct lake clusters, providing a basis for comparison
of broad-scale community gradients in lake-rich regions elsewhere. This
may help guide future research to explore evolutionary constraints on the
rich Neotropical benthic diatom species pool.
Tropical South America Diatom DatabaseThis database consists in two
different datasets: 1) Diatom dataset: include the individual diatom
datasets (presence/absence data) of the study regions 2) Environment
dataset: include limnological and geo-climatic variables of the study
lakesTropicalSA-DiatomDB.xlsx
tropical Andes
Tropical South America