What Shapes the Phylogenetic Structure of Anuran Communities in a Seasonal Environment? The Influence of Determinism at Regional Scale to Stochasticity or Antagonistic Forces at Local Scale
Ecological communities are structured by both deterministic and stochastic processes. We investigated phylogenetic patterns at regional and local scales to understand the influences of seasonal processes in shaping the structure of anuran communities in the southern Pantanal wetland, Brazil. We assessed the phylogenetic structure at different scales, using the Net Relatedness Index (NRI), the Nearest Taxon Index (NTI), and phylobetadiversity indexes, as well as a permutation test, to evaluate the effect of seasonality. The anuran community was represented by a non-random set of species with a high degree of phylogenetic relatedness at the regional scale. However, at the local scale the phylogenetic structure of the community was weakly related with the seasonality of the system, indicating that oriented stochastic processes (e.g. colonization, extinction and ecological drift) and/or antagonist forces drive the structure of such communities in the southern Pantanal.
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia e Conservação, Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil;Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil;Departamento de Sistemática e Ecologia, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil;Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil;Departamento de Ciências Básicas e Produção Animal, Faculdade de Agronomia, Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, Brazil;Laboratório de Vida Selvagem, Embrapa Pantanal, Empresa Brasileira de pesquisa Agropecuária, Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil
Recommended Citation:
Clarissa de Araújo Martins,Fabio de Oliveira Roque,Bráulio A. Santos,et al. What Shapes the Phylogenetic Structure of Anuran Communities in a Seasonal Environment? The Influence of Determinism at Regional Scale to Stochasticity or Antagonistic Forces at Local Scale[J]. PLOS ONE,2015-01-01,10(6)