Abstract
Determining patterns of change in species richness and the processes underlying the dynamics of biodiversity are of key interest within the field of ecology, but few studies have investigated the dynamics of vertebrate communities at a decadal temporal scale. Here, we report findings on the spatio-temporal variability in the richness and composition of fish communities along the Norwegian Skagerrak coast having been surveyed for more than half a century. Using statistical models incorporating non-detection and associated sampling variance, we estimate local species richness and changes in species composition allowing us to compute temporal variability in species richness. We tested whether temporal variation could be related to distance to the open sea and to local levels of pollution. Clear differences in mean species richness and temporal variability are observed between fjords that were and were not exposed to the effects of pollution. Altogether this indicates that the fjord is an appropriate scale for studying changes in coastal fish communities in space and time. The year-to-year rates of local extinction and turnover were found to be smaller than spatial differences in community composition. At the regional level, exposure to the open sea plays a homogenizing role, possibly due to coastal currents and advection.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (447.7 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Boulinier T., Nichols J. D., Hines J. E., Sauer J. R., Flather C. H., Pollock K. H. Higher temporal variability of forest breeding bird communities in fragmented landscapes. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998 Jun 23;95(13):7497–7501. doi: 10.1073/pnas.95.13.7497. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Colwell R. K., Coddington J. A. Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1994 Jul 29;345(1311):101–118. doi: 10.1098/rstb.1994.0091. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Heltshe J. F., Forrester N. E. Estimating species richness using the jackknife procedure. Biometrics. 1983 Mar;39(1):1–11. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- doi: 10.1098/rspb.1999.0827. [DOI] [PMC free article] [Google Scholar]
- Pimm S. L., Russell G. J., Gittleman J. L., Brooks T. M. The future of biodiversity. Science. 1995 Jul 21;269(5222):347–350. doi: 10.1126/science.269.5222.347. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Poulin R. Comparison of three estimators of species richness in parasite component communities. J Parasitol. 1998 Jun;84(3):485–490. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Ricklefs R. E. Community diversity: relative roles of local and regional processes. Science. 1987 Jan 9;235(4785):167–171. doi: 10.1126/science.235.4785.167. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Walther B. A., Morand S. Comparative performance of species richness estimation methods. Parasitology. 1998 Apr;116(Pt 4):395–405. doi: 10.1017/s0031182097002230. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]