Mechanistic approach and elements of metacommunity structure of the zooplankton of palm swamps in the Neotropical region

Abstract

Studies of metacommunities are of great importance for ecological knowledge because they assess how the processes related to the species' niche and the dispersion processes structure the communities. In this context, the objective of the present study was to investigate the main assembly mechanisms responsible for the structuring of the zooplankton community in a complex of neotropical palm swamps (“veredas”), consisting of sets of small common ponds in the Brazilian savannah, similar to swamps. Zooplankton were sampled in the pelagic region of 15 veredas in April 2018. The zooplankton total community showed a distribution related to spatial and environmental factors. For Rotifera the relative importance of environmental factors was greater, while Cladocera and Copepoda were more structured by space. The community was still structured according to the Gleasonian model of distribution, where Rotifera presented a Gleasonian structure, Cladocera quasi-Gleasonian, and Copepoda quasi-nested random. The influence of environmental and spatial factors and the resulting structure of the zooplankton metacommunity seem to be directly related to the dispersal capacity in each group. Differences in relative importance of the factors that shaped the community highlight the idiosyncratic characteristics of zooplankton species. Thus, we emphasize the importance of using the two approaches of metacommunity studies to help to elucidate the processes that govern the structuring of metacommunities.