Spatial and Temporal Ecological Uniqueness of Andean Diatom Communities Are Correlated With Climate, Geodiversity and Long-Term Limnological Change

Xavier Benito,Sherilyn C Fritz,Melina Luethje,Maria Laura Carrevedo,Marja Lindholm,Annika Vilmi

doi:10.3389/fevo.2020.00260

Abstract

National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) from the US NSF DBI-1639145 National Geographic Society 8672-09 Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT) CONICYT FONDECYT LIFE14/IPE/FI/023 project FRESHABIT LIFE IP LIFE14/IPE/FI/023 National Science Foundation (NSF) EAR-1338694

Highlights

Human activities have caused in the past and are currently causing diverse and long-lasting changes in freshwater ecosystems (Vitousek et al, 1997)
We can assume that each study region operates as a metacommunity (Benito et al, 2018b) and hypothesize on mechanisms driving local contribution to beta diversity (LCBD) patterns by considering the variability of lake diatom habitats (Figure 1B). We suggest that it is the diversity from the peripheral communities that eventually determines between-lake diversity of diatoms and the ecological uniqueness of the lakes compared to other sites in the region
By identifying diatom richness contributions to beta diversity over time, we were able to observe a shared limnological response to warm/dry climatic changes centered around the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) driven by decreased temperature seasonality and conductivity

Summary

Introduction

Human activities have caused in the past and are currently causing diverse and long-lasting changes in freshwater ecosystems (Vitousek et al, 1997). Contemporary and paleolimnological studies still remain largely disconnected in biodiversity and environmental change research (Gregory-Eaves and Beisner, 2011). One reason for this may be that the application of the metacommunity concept (i.e., set of local communities potentially connected by dispersal of multiple interacting species, Leibold et al, 2004), has so far seldomly been applied over long time scales. Understanding broad-scale biodiversity patterns is necessary, because many environmental pressures operate at large spatial and long temporal scales but interactions with high-elevation lakes at smaller scales (Catalan et al, 2013) are still mostly unexplored

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion