Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Predation, community asynchrony, and metacommunity stability in cyanobacterial mats

View ORCID ProfileEthan C. Cissell, View ORCID ProfileSophie J. McCoy
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.07.511315
Ethan C. Cissell
1Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Ethan C. Cissell
  • For correspondence: ecissell@unc.edu
Sophie J. McCoy
1Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Sophie J. McCoy
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

ABSTRACT

The dynamism of ecological interactions in rapidly changing ecosystems can be understood only by linking community context to population dynamics. Holistic characterization of such mechanisms requires integrating patterns of variability across scales. Here, we integrated observational, experimental, and theoretical approaches to unify local and regional ecological processes driving the dynamics of benthic cyanobacterial mats on coral reefs off the island of Bonaire, Caribbean Netherlands. Community and metacommunity dynamics of mats were tracked for 49 days alongside quantification of macropredation pressure from fishes. We tested the hypothesis that enhanced predation would result in decreased mat persistence in situ. Finally, we constructed a cellular automaton model to predict patterns in mat metacommunity dynamics across different scenarios of top-down and bottom-up control and dispersal. Cyanobacterial mat metacommunities were temporally stable across the study, stabilized by asynchrony in the dynamics of communities. Diverse reef fishes foraged on mats in situ and experimental increases in predation pressure decreased the instantaneous mortality rate of mat communities over mat communities experiencing natural levels of predation pressure. Theoretical simulations suggested that dispersal conveys a rescuing effect on mat metacommunity abundance under scenarios of strong trophic control.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • This version of the manuscript has been revised following Editorial Board comments

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted January 04, 2023.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Predation, community asynchrony, and metacommunity stability in cyanobacterial mats
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Predation, community asynchrony, and metacommunity stability in cyanobacterial mats
Ethan C. Cissell, Sophie J. McCoy
bioRxiv 2022.10.07.511315; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.07.511315
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Predation, community asynchrony, and metacommunity stability in cyanobacterial mats
Ethan C. Cissell, Sophie J. McCoy
bioRxiv 2022.10.07.511315; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.07.511315

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Ecology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4383)
  • Biochemistry (9599)
  • Bioengineering (7093)
  • Bioinformatics (24865)
  • Biophysics (12615)
  • Cancer Biology (9958)
  • Cell Biology (14354)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7950)
  • Ecology (12107)
  • Epidemiology (2067)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15989)
  • Genetics (10925)
  • Genomics (14743)
  • Immunology (9869)
  • Microbiology (23676)
  • Molecular Biology (9485)
  • Neuroscience (50872)
  • Paleontology (369)
  • Pathology (1539)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2683)
  • Physiology (4016)
  • Plant Biology (8657)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1509)
  • Synthetic Biology (2397)
  • Systems Biology (6436)
  • Zoology (1346)