Contribution of environmental and spatial processes to rocky intertidal metacommunity structure

It has been debated whether the community structure of an open system is more dependent on environmental processes associated with niche explanations, or on spatial processes related to dispersal. Their relative importance may differ among taxonomic groups with properties of the community such as ecological characteristics (e.g., dispersal ability and life history) and habitat type. We examined the relative importance of environmental and spatial processes on community structure for three taxonomic groups with different ecological characteristics (macroalgae, sessile invertebrates, and mobile molluscs) in rocky intertidal shores of Sanriku Coast, Japan. To evaluate the relative contribution of the two processes in determining community structure, we conducted variation partitioning to reveal the degree of variation of community structure (i.e., β-diversity) explained by environmental heterogeneity and spatial arrangement of local communities. The results of our analyses indicated that β-diversity was significantly explained by both environmental factors (macroalgae, 29.3% of community variation: sessile animal, 40.7%: mobile molluscs, 16.7%) and spatial factors (macroalgae, 19.9%: sessile animal, 3.6%: mobile molluscs, 6.6%) in all taxonomic groups. These results imply that although some taxonomic groups live in the same ecosystem, share common resources, and interact with each other, the mechanisms determining their community structure change depending on ecological characteristics such as dispersal ability and life history.