Temporal Trajectories In Metacommunity Structure: Insights From Interdisciplinary Research In Intermittent Streams

Metacommunity ecology represents a framework for identifying linkages between environmental heterogeneity, spatial processes, and local communities of organisms. Despite advancements in metacommunity theory, there remains a need to understand temporal dynamics of multi-taxa metacommunities in variable ecosystems such as intermittent streams. We present a review of literature, three recent conceptual models, and a case study regarding metacommunity temporal dynamics in intermittent streams. The literature review revealed that the cumulative number of studies addressing temporal dynamics in aquatic metacommunities steadily increased between 2012 and 2020. Intermittent streams were the fourth-most commonly studied ecosystem and interdisciplinary studies involving multiple taxa were the third-most common taxonomic focus. The most common analytical method was variation partitioning, and analysis of beta diversity components surpassed both distance decay and elements of metacommunity structure as the second-most used method from 2018 to 2020. Three recent conceptual models describing metacommunity dynamics in intermittent streams predict: (a) higher local species richness (i.e., alpha diversity) during rewetting and wet hydrologic phases, (b) stronger effects of dispersal over environmental sorting during the rewetting and wet phases, and (c) emergence of primarily nested structures during the wet hydrologic phase. When tested in a case study focused on microbes, aquatic invertebrates, and fishes, each of these predictions were partially, but not completely supported. Our results reveal expanding interest in temporal aspects of aquatic metacommunity structure and highlight how research in intermittent streams is poised to simultaneously advance basic metacommunity ecology and applied conservation biology through continued refinement of new and existing conceptual syntheses.This article is categorized under: Water and Life