Macrosystem community change in lake phytoplankton and its implications for diversity and function
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2022-12-07, 2022-12-07
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Aim: We use lake phytoplankton community data to quantify the spatio-temporal and scale-dependent impacts of eutrophication, land-use, and climate change on species niches and community assembly processes while accounting for species traits and phylogenetic constraints.
Location: Finland
Time period: 1977-2017
Major taxa: Phytoplankton
Methods: We use Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (HMSC) to model meta-community trajectories at 853 lakes over four decades of environmental change, including a hierarchical spatial structure to account for scale-dependent processes. Using a 'region of common profile' approach, we evaluate compositional changes of species communities and trait profiles and investigate their temporal development.
Results: We demonstrate the emergence of novel and widespread community composition clusters in previously more compositional homogeneous communities, with cluster-specific community trait profiles, indicating functional differences. A strong phylogenetic signal of species' responses to the environment implies similar responses among closely related taxa. Community cluster-specific species prevalence point to lower taxonomic dispersion within the current dominant clusters compared to the historically dominant cluster and overall higher prevalence of smaller species sizes within communities. Our findings denote profound spatio-temporal structuring of species co-occurrence patterns and highlight functional differences of lake phytoplankton communities.
Main conclusions: Diverging community trajectories have led to a nationwide reshuffling of lake phytoplankton communities. At regional and national scales, lakes are not single entities but metacommunity hubs in an interconnected waterscape. The assembly mechanisms of phytoplankton communities are strongly structured by spatio-temporal dynamics, which have led to novel community types but only a minor part of this reshuffling could be linked to temporal environmental change.