Metacommunity analysis of meiobenthos of deep-sediments from the Gulf of Mexico
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Abstract
Background Metacommunity theory is a conceptual framework addressing the interdependence of local interactions and regional processes, especially when communities have no clear boundaries and it is difficult to relate community structure and the environment at different spatial scales.
Methods To test the applicability of this theory to meiobenthos, twenty-seven deep-sea sediment samples from the Gulf of Mexico were analyzed for meiobenthic and nematode community distribution and structure along with a set of environmental variables.
Results Spatial and temporal heterogeneity in environmental conditions were found among sampling stations; and some variables, such as depth, inorganic carbon, carbon/nitrogen ratio, oxygen and percentage of sand, proved influential on total community abundance. Nematodes were the dominant meiofaunal group and its abundance highly variable among sites and sampling periods. Nematofauna was dominated by bacterivory, which also possessed the highest maturity index. Environmental characteristics showed a significant relation with community structure, not so the dispersal of nematode genera.
Discussion In light of our findings we posit that the deep-sea meiobenthos of the Gulf of Mexico may represent a metacommunity following the “species sorting model”. This inference is based on the different taxonomic structures among sampling stations correlating with environmental differences, in the presence of local niche diversification and limited dispersal.
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2018. Metacommunity analysis of meiobenthos of deep-sediments from the Gulf of Mexico. PeerJ Preprints 6:e3380v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3380v2Author comment
Version 2 has a new sampling stations nomenclature.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests
Author Contributions
José Alejandro Cisterna-Céliz conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Mirayana Marcelino-Barros conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Axayacatl Rocha-Olivares conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The datasets of environmental variables generated during XIXIMI cruises and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due a blackout period imposed by funding sources (Mexican Government), but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request and for peer-review purposes.
Funding
This research was funded by grant 0OE111 from Instituto Nacional de Ecología (INE), Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), and Consejo Nacional para la Biodiversidad (CONABIO) to the Centro de Investigación Científica y Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE) and from the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico - Mexican Ministry of Energy - Hydrocarbon Trust, project 201441. This research is derived from the first author Ph.D. and the second author M.Sc. research projects. They both benefited from graduate fellowships from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) to support their graduate programs in Marine Ecology at CICESE. This is a contribution of the Gulf of Mexico Research Consortium (CIGoM). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.