کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
5766014 1627446 2017 7 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
Intertidal soft-sediment community does not respond to disturbance as postulated by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis
موضوعات مرتبط
مهندسی و علوم پایه علوم زمین و سیارات اقیانوس شناسی
پیش نمایش صفحه اول مقاله
Intertidal soft-sediment community does not respond to disturbance as postulated by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis
چکیده انگلیسی

Highlight
- The IDH predicts that disturbances of an intermediate severity or intensity will maximize community richness.
- Controversy surrounds the IDH, as some ecologists support it and others call for its abandonment.
- We disturbed intertidal sediment to see if an infaunal community responded to disturbances as predicted by the IDH.
- Richness did not peak at intermediate intensities or frequencies of disturbance.
- This is likely due to the subtle differences between successional stages in this intertidal community.

The Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis (IDH) predicts that disturbances of an intermediate frequency or intensity will maximize community biodiversity/richness. Once almost universally accepted, controversy now surrounds this hypothesis, and there have even been calls for its abandonment. Therefore, we experimentally evaluated if an infaunal community along the north coast of British Columbia, Canada, would respond to disturbances as predicted by the IDH. The characteristics of this soft-sediment intertidal mudflat (productivity, species pool, population growth rate) maximized our chances of finding evidence to support the IDH. More specifically, we tested if intermediate severities and frequencies of disturbance maximized infaunal community richness by mechanically disturbing sediment, and varying the intensity (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the surface area of a plot disturbed) and frequency of sediment disturbance (never, once, twice, and every week during a four week period). No effect of frequency or intensity of sediment disturbance on community richness was observed. Further, none of our experimental treatments were statistically different than the controls. This is likely due to the subtle difference between successional stages in this soft-sediment habitat (difference of less than one taxa between treatments). Therefore, in habitats whose productivity, regional species pool, and population growth rates would otherwise suggest a response to disturbances as predicted by the IDH, minor differences between successional stages may result in richness patterns that deviate from those predicted by the IDH.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Journal of Sea Research - Volume 129, November 2017, Pages 22-28
نویسندگان
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