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Primary assembly of soil communities: disentangling the effect of dispersal and local environment

  • Community ecology - Original research
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Abstract

It has long been recognised that dispersal abilities and environmental factors are important in shaping invertebrate communities, but their relative importance for primary soil community assembly has not yet been disentangled. By studying soil communities along chronosequences on four recently emerged nunataks (ice-free land in glacial areas) in Iceland, we replicated environmental conditions spatially at various geographical distances. This allowed us to determine the underlying factors of primary community assembly with the help of metacommunity theories that predict different levels of dispersal constraints and effects of the local environment. Comparing community assembly of the nunataks with that of non-isolated deglaciated areas indicated that isolation of a few kilometres did not affect the colonisation of the soil invertebrates. When accounting for effects of geographical distances, soil age and plant richness explained a significant part of the variance observed in the distribution of the oribatid mites and collembola communities, respectively. Furthermore, null model analyses revealed less co-occurrence than expected by chance and also convergence in the body size ratio of co-occurring oribatids, which is consistent with species sorting. Geographical distances influenced species composition, indicating that the community is also assembled by dispersal, e.g. mass effect. When all the results are linked together, they demonstrate that local environmental factors are important in structuring the soil community assembly, but are accompanied with effects of dispersal that may “override” the visible effect of the local environment.

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Acknowledgments

The study was performed in Vatnajökull National Park. All the people who gave advices on the nunataks and the glacier, borrowed and transported equipment/supplies are thanked, especially Hálfdán and Helgi Björnsson, farmers at Kvísker, Öræfi. Arne Fjellberg assisted in identification of collembolans. Starri Heiðmarsson provided us with the outlines of the nunataks from 2005. We thank Alwyn Williams for his comments on the manuscript. T. Caruso was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, EBESA IPY project n1 452, SCAR EBA Programs, and the Italian PNRA (Programma azionale di Ricerche in Antartide) with funding granted to Roberto Bargagli (University of Siena). The work was supported by Kvískerjasjóður, The Crafoord Foundation and Kungliga Fysiografiska Sällskapet i Lund.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Lund University, Sölvegatan 37, 223 62, Lund, Sweden

    María Ingimarsdóttir, Jörgen Ripa & Katarina Hedlund

  2. The Icelandic Institute of Natural History, Urriðaholtsstræti 6-8, P.O. Box 125, 212, Garðabær, Iceland

    María Ingimarsdóttir

  3. Institut für Biologie, Plant Ecology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Tancredi Caruso

  4. Institute of Biology, University of Iceland, Askja, Sturlugötu 7, 101, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Ólöf Birna Magnúsdóttir

  5. Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Siena, via A. Moro n° 2, 53100, Siena, Italy

    Massimo Migliorini

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  1. María Ingimarsdóttir
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Correspondence to María Ingimarsdóttir.

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Communicated by Roland Brandl.

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Ingimarsdóttir, M., Caruso, T., Ripa, J. et al. Primary assembly of soil communities: disentangling the effect of dispersal and local environment. Oecologia 170, 745–754 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-012-2334-8

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