Ecological determinants of intertidal recruitment and metacommunity structure on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
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Abstract
Rocky-intertidal species are often distributed as metacommunities along marine shores, as rocky habitats are patchy. Nearshore pelagic conditions often explain variation among the local communities, but most studies have been done on eastern ocean boundary coasts. We investigated potential drivers of intertidal metacommunity structure on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia. We studied the high intertidal zone of nine wave-exposed bedrock locations spanning 425 km of coastline. At each location in the spring, we measured the recruitment of barnacles and mussels, the two predominant sessile invertebrates. Satellite data on coastal phytoplankton abundance and particulate organic carbon (food supply for intertidal filter-feeders) and in-situ data on coastal seawater temperature explained to varying degrees the geographic structure of recruitment. In turn, the summer abundance of both filter-feeders was positively related to their spring recruitment. Ultimately, predator (dogwhelk) abundance increased with the recruitment and abundance of barnacles and mussels (the main prey of dogwhelks), suggesting that bottom-up forcing influences metacommunity structure on this coast. Sea ice constituted an overlapping source of variation. Drift ice leaving the Gulf of St. Lawrence in late winter disturbed intertidal communities in the northern locations, limiting local biodiversity compared with central and southern locations.
Cite this as
2018. Ecological determinants of intertidal recruitment and metacommunity structure on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26945v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26945v1note This preprint is not peer-reviewed. You may wish to reference the subsequent peer-reviewed version of this article.
Author comment
This is our presentation made at the 4th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, held in Montreal (QC, Canada) in May 2018. This presentation should be included in the WCMB-2018 collection.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare to have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Ricardo A. Scrosati conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Julius A. Ellrich performed the experiments, analyzed the data, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The data will be available as part of the underlying peer-reviewed article in Ecosphere, volume 9, issue 5, 2018.
Funding
The authors received no funding for this work.
