Understanding the role of stochasticity in metacommunity assembly under global changes

• Grant number: 22/01452-1
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: December 01, 2022
• End date: November 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Theoretical Ecology
• Agreement: NSF - Dimensions of Biodiversity and BIOTA
• Principal Investigator: Victor Satoru Saito
• Grantee: Victor Satoru Saito
• Principal researcher abroad: Bryan L. Brown
• Institution abroad: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde (CCBS). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Tadeu de Siqueira Barros
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/17620-6 - Unraveling tropical aquatic insect biodiversity with refined spatiotemporal data, BP.TT; 24/21882-6 - The phenology of aquatic insects in tropical regions, BP.TT; 24/08877-3 - Temporal variation in macroinvertebrates communities in a tropical watershed, BP.TT; + associated scholarships 24/02860-1 - Temporal dynamics of different life stages in neotropical aquatic insects, BP.TT; 24/01576-8 - Uncovering tropical aquatic insect biodiversity with fine-grained spatiotemporal data, BP.TT; 23/08229-9 - The phenology of aquatic insects in tropical regions - scholarship 1, BP.TT; 23/08252-0 - The phenology of aquatic insects in tropical regions - scholarship 2, BP.TT; 23/00574-9 - The role of stochastic community assembly on the size structure of aquatic metacommunities under global change, BP.PD; 22/16053-5 - Temporal variation in macroinvertebrates communities in a tropical watershed, BP.TT - associated scholarships

Abstract

Understanding the organization of biodiversity on Earth has puzzled ecologists and biogeographers for centuries. For a long time, only part of these patterns around the globe was explained by deterministic processes related to environmental filters related to functional traits and biotic interactions, while much of the variation that disobeyed these rules were termed to be rather stochastic (i.e. unpredictable, unknown cause). Improving our understanding of this stochastic variation in community taxonomic, functional and trophic composition is crucial to forecast how nature will respond to global changes and how this will affect ecosystem services for society. In the last decades we discovered that stochasticity emerges from demographic processes (birth, reproduction, dispersal); biological events that are inherently variable at the individual level and therefore unpredictable at the community level. Recently, however, ecologists invested a large effort to describe the factors and processes that could enhance or undermine the effect of demographic processes in biodiversity patterns. For example, population size is important as the dynamics of small populations are relatively more impacted by stochastic demographic events. Also, communities under higher temperatures with enhanced metabolism are thought to be more stochastic as damages accumulate faster (more oxidative reactions, telomere shortening, and mutations) in all organisms increasing death rates independently of species identities and reducing their ecological differences. In riverine ecosystems, stochasticity should come from multiple sources and vary at multiple spatial scales. At the riverine scale, we predict that headwaters and mainstems should sustain populations with different sizes and dynamics owing to their differences in heterogeneity and habitat size, impacting how demographic events, such as individual dispersal and recolonization scale up to patterns of community composition. At the global scale, differences in climate and seasonality should drive variations in individual metabolism and population life cycles with enhanced stochasticity in warmer and more unpredictable environments. This multiscale variation in the preponderance of stochastic processes should impact the functioning of ecosystems through changes in trophic interactions mediated by species traits and organisms' body size. In order to test these predictions, we will conduct a novel coordinated in-situ spatio-temporal study involving tropical and temperate riverine ecosystems. Our aim is to quantify and understand the relative importance of different sources of stochasticity during community assembly and how this would impact functional aspects of trophic interactions and energetic flows. We will generalize our findings by parameterizing a Beverton-Holt model with empirical data from the field. By analyzing the results of both the field and models we expect to advance our understanding of the factors and processes behind stochasticity during metacommunity assembly that ultimately entails our global patterns of biodiversity. (AU)

Scientific publications

(4)

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

VALENTE-NETO, FRANCISCO; MELLO, JOSE L. S.; PESTANA, GABRIELLE C.; SHIMABUKURO, ERIKA M.; DE SIQUEIRA, ALEXANDRE S.; COVICH, ALAN P.; SAITO, VICTOR S.. Ecological perspectives on the organization of biodiversity in Neotropical streams. Hydrobiologia, v. N/A, p. 23-pg., 2024-07-12. (23/00574-9, 21/13299-0, 22/01452-1)

COLLYER, GIOVANNA; PERKINS, DANIEL M.; PETSCH, DANIELLE K.; SIQUEIRA, TADEU; SAITO, VICTOR. Land-use intensification systematically alters the size structure of aquatic communities in the Neotropics. GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY, v. 29, n. 14, p. 13-pg., 2023-05-01. (19/06291-3, 13/50424-1, 22/01452-1)

ROBERT, VINICIUS A.; MELLO, JOSE L. S.; SHIMABUKURO, ERIKA M.; SAITO, VICTOR S.. Can omnivory explain variation in size-density relationships? The case of Leptonema in a neotropical stream. FOOD WEBS, v. 41, p. 4-pg., 2024-11-30. (22/16053-5, 22/01452-1, 23/00574-9)

SAITO, VICTOR S.; KRATINA, PAVEL; BARBOSA, GEDIMAR; FERREIRA, FABIO COP; LEAL, JEAN BARBOSA; ZEMELKA, GABRIELA; SARMENTO, HUGO; PERKINS, DANIEL M.. Untangling the complex food webs of tropical rainforest streams. Journal of Animal Ecology, v. 93, n. 8, p. 14-pg., 2024-06-07. (20/07522-6, 19/05464-1, 22/01452-1)