Do communities exist? Complex patterns of overlapping marine species distributions

• Published in: Ecology (Durham) 2014-07, Vol.95 (7), p.2016-2025
• Main Authors: Leaper, Rebecca, Dunstan, Piers K, Foster, Scott D, Barrett, Neville S, Edgar, Graham J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Applied ecology; aquatic organisms; Archetypes; Clements; Communities; community; Community structure; composition; Demography; Ecological modeling; Ecosystem; Fishes - physiology; Gleason; grouping; Invertebrates - physiology; Lean fishes; Macroinvertebrates; Marine ecology; marine ecosystems; marine environment; Models, Biological; Nonnative species; Oceans and Seas; prediction; Species; species archetype; species diversity; Species Specificity; statistical analysis; Statistics; structure; subtidal rocky reefs; Synecology
• ISSN: 0012-9658; 1939-9170
• DOI: 10.1890/13-0789.1

Understanding the way in which species are associated in communities is a fundamental question in ecology. Yet there remains a tension between communities as highly structured units or as coincidental collections of individualistic species. We explored these ideas using a new statistical approach that clusters species based on their environmental response: a species archetype, rather than clustering sites based on their species composition. We found groups of species that are consistently highly correlated, but that these groups are not unique to any set of locations and overlap spatially. The species present at a single site are a realization of species from the (multiple) archetype groups that are likely to be present at that location based on their response to the environment.