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Diversity is maintained by seasonal variation in species abundance.pdf (476.75 kB)

Diversity is maintained by seasonal variation in species abundance

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posted on 2016-04-21, 09:05 authored by Hideyasu Shimadzu, Maria Dornelas, Peter A. Henderson, Anne E. Magurran
Background: Some of the most marked temporal fluctuations in species abundances are linked to seasons. In theory, multispecies assemblages can persist if species use shared resources at different times, thereby minimizing interspecific competition. However, there is scant empirical evidence supporting these predictions and, to the best of our knowledge, seasonal variation has never been explored in the context of fluctuation-mediated coexistence.Results: Using an exceptionally well-documented estuarine fish assemblage, sampled monthly for over 30 years, we show that temporal shifts in species abundances underpin species coexistence. Species fall into distinct seasonal groups, within which spatial resource use is more heterogeneous than would be expected by chance at those times when competition for food is most intense. We also detect seasonal variation in the richness and evenness of the community, again linked to shifts in resource availability.Conclusions: These results reveal that spatiotemporal shifts in community composition minimize competitive interactions and help stabilize total abundance. © 2013 Shimadzu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Funding

We acknowledge support from the European Research Council (project BioTIME 250189) and the Royal Society. MD acknowledges funding from the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology Scotland (MASTS).

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Mathematical Sciences

Published in

BMC Biology

Volume

11

Citation

SHIMADZU, H. ... et al, 2013. Diversity is maintained by seasonal variation in species abundance. BMC Biology, 11, 98.

Publisher

BioMed Central / © The Authors

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Unported (CC BY 2.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Publication date

2013

Notes

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

eISSN

1741-7007

Language

  • en

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