Patterns and drivers of species co-occurrence networks in a tropical stream fish metacommunity

Shukla, R and Bhat, A (2022) Patterns and drivers of species co-occurrence networks in a tropical stream fish metacommunity. In: Hydrobiologia .

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Abstract

Over the past few decades, freshwater ecologists have been keen to understand the factors driving patterns of species co-occurrences in stream metacommunities where local communities are linked by dispersal. However, there is a lack of explanations for how and why some species co-occur more often than others and what species-specific ecological traits mediate such co-occurrence patterns in stream systems. Here, we studied monsoonal tropical stream fish communities of central India and examined species co-occurrence patterns using a network approach. We assessed the potential role of species-level properties (specifically, regional occupancy, local abundance and persistence, body size, and habitat and food preferences) in explaining fish metacommunity structure. We first constructed an abundance-based correlation network using only positive associations and performed modularity analysis to identify highly linked species sub-groups (modules). We then examined the relationship of species properties with module identity of species. We found that the co-occurrence network formed highly linked modular structures with a total of 6 modules. Predictive models suggested that species with similar ecological traits show higher possibility of co-occurring across the local communities. Food and habitat preferences, mean local persistence and body size were the single best predictors for module 0, 1 and 2 respectively. Food and habitat preference, and regional occupancy predicted species presence in module 5. We did not find statistically significant variables as predictors for the other two modules. This study signifies that the tropical fish metacommunity forms non-random co-occurrence network patterns with species modules and species-specific traits probably drive these modularity patterns. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Hydrobiologia
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH.
Keywords:	Co-occurrence; Metacommunity; Network module; Occupancy; Stream fish
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences
Date Deposited:	06 Jun 2022 06:16
Last Modified:	06 Jun 2022 06:16
URI:	https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/73149

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