BIBLIOS

Tipo
Artigos em Revista

Tipo de Documento
Artigo Completo

Título
Assessing Alternative Microscopy-Based Approaches to Species Abundance Description of Intertidal Diatom Communities

Participantes na publicação
Lourenço Ribeiro (Author)
Vanda Brotas (Author)
Dep. Biologia Vegetal
MARE

Resumo
Diatoms usually dominate microphytobenthic biofilms in coastal and estuarine intertidal\nenvironments. Yet, functional studies on biofilms often skip species analysis because\nbenthic diatoms are notoriously difficult to extract from sediments and challenging\nto identify at that taxonomic level. Valid, less time-consuming alternatives would\nsurely be welcomed and increase the inclusion of community structure information\nin microphytobenthos (MPB) ecophysiological studies. Starting with an original 181-\nspecies abundances matrix (OSM), obtained during a 2-year spatial–temporal survey\nin a Tagus Estuary intertidal flat with contrasting sediment textures, the current study\nassessed the effectiveness of several approaches to species abundances analysis.\nThe effect of excluding abundance data or rare species, the influence of taxonomic\nresolution, or the use of size-based metrics on biotic multivariate patterns was examined\nby an objective comparison that replicated these different approaches on three\ndifferent levels: (1) inter-matrix correlations, (2) performance in several non-parametric\nmultivariate analyses (ANOSIM, MDS), and (3) correlations with the environmental\ndataset. When compared with the OSM, all matrices had strong or very strong\npositive correlations. All discriminated successfully spatial patterns, separating well\nassemblages from sandy and muddy sediments, and all had significant correlations\nwith the environmental dataset. Apart from the relative biovolume species matrix (BSM),\nonly the species matrices were able to discriminate significantly temporal patterns.\nThe exclusion of the rarest species (48% of total) had a negligible effect, with the\ncommon and original species abundances matrices having a r > 0.99 correlation. Of\nthe alternative approaches to species abundances, species presence/absence and the\ngenera abundances matrices yielded the best results overall. Genera presence/absence\nand the size-class matrices had intermediate performances, with the former performing\ncomparatively poorly with regard to seasonal patterns. BSM had the lowest correlation\nwith the environmental variable dataset (r = 0.598) and the worst overall performance\nin the other multivariate routines. This means that either a high-taxonomic resolution\nqualitative analysis (i.e. species presence/absence) or, in alternatively, a genus-level\nanalysis retaining abundance data may be sufficient to describe basic spatial differences\nin estuarine intertidal flats. However, if seasonal variations in mudflat diatom assemblage\nstructure are to be detected, species-level abundance data are still necessary.


Instituição
FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS DA UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA

Suporte
Frontiers in Marine Science

Identificadores da Publicação
ISSN - 2296-7745

Editora
Frontiers Media SA



Identificadores do Documento
DOI - https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.00036
URL - http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.00036

Identificadores de Qualidade
SCOPUS Q1 (2019) - 4.4 - Aquatic Science

Keywords
diatoms community structure intertidal flats microphytobenthos multivariate analysis taxonomic sufficiency

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