Grupos substitutos, correspondência de assembléias aquáticas em relação a esquemas de classificação regional, e determinantes de diversidade beta em uma planície de inundação neotropical

• Autor(a) principal: PADIAL, André Andrian
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFG
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tde/2635
• topic: Assembléias biológicas; conservação; planície de inundação; 1.Planície de inundação Alto rio Paraná - Conservação 2.Organismos aquáticos; Meetings biological, conservation, flood plain; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ECOLOGIA

A general goal in community ecology is to understand how communities are organized in space and time. An aspect of great interest is to evaluate how concordant are the patterns of beta diversity depicted by different biological groups. If two taxonomic groups present a similar spatial/temporal structure, only one of these groups can be used as a surrogate group in conservation efforts or bioassessments. Also, a strong correspondence between biological groups and physical classifications of the habitat could help us to understand the reasons for spatial organization of communities. Moreover, if communities respond to a priori classifications based on geological and environmental features of the habitats, the selection of priority areas for conservation distributed on the classes of a classification scheme could maximize the conservation of overall biodiversity. Finally, to understand the main processes driving the organization of communities, the relative role of different set of predictor variables can be simultaneously evaluated. If species compositions are mainly predicted by environmental variables then one can conclude that species sorting mechanisms are the main drivers of community structure. On the other hand, if variables that represent spatial structure of the environments are the main predictors of variation in species composition, then neutral processes may be invoked to explain the structure of the biological group under analysis. Therefore, the main goals of this thesis are: (i) to evaluate the concordance among distinct biological groups; (ii) to evaluate the correspondence between a priori physical classifications of the habitat and the composition of assemblages and; (iii) to evaluate the relative role of environmental and spatial predictors on the structure of local assemblages in a Neotropical floodplain. For that, we used data sets on six biological groups (fish, benthic macroinvertebrates, aquatic macrophytes, zooplankton, phytoplankton, and periphyton) which were gathered during 2000 and 2001 in up to 36 aquatic environments of the Upper Paraná River floodplain. Patterns of assemblage concordance were frequently observed. The main mechanisms responsible for cross-taxon concordance were a similar response to environmental/spatial gradients and biological interactions between species. The mechanisms were identified after controlling for the effect of environmental/spatial variables on the cross-taxon concordance and after evaluating the level of concordance between species from each group that most likely are linked by biological interactions. However, the levels of assemblage concordance were weak and varied conspicuously with time. These results highlight that the use of surrogate groups is a flawed strategy to support conservation efforts in the Upper Paraná River floodplain. Nevertheless, the classification scheme of the floodplain, considering mainly limnological and geological aspects, was efficient to represent the structure of different aquatic assemblages. Thus, conservation efforts and bioassessments of the aquatic flora and fauna can use this classification scheme. However, the temporal variability also affected the consistency of the correspondence and this issue should be further investigated. On the other hand, temporal variables were not effective in predicting the structure of different biological assemblages. Environmental and spatial variables were generally more important, but also with low predictive power. Spatial variables were particularly important for large organisms with low dispersal ability, such as sedentary fish and aquatic plants. On the other hand, compared to spatial predictors, environmental variables were more important to explain the structure of small-bodied organisms with high dispersal ability (such as micro-algae) and organisms with migratory behavior. Nevertheless, all variables had a low predictive power, probably due to the low extent of the environmental and spatial gradients and to the lack of variables that represent relevant processes for determining the structure of aquatic assemblages in floodplains.