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Partition among niche and neutral explanations for metacommunity patterns of fish from Cerrado streams
  • +6
  • Thiago Bernardi Vieira,
  • Liriann Chrisley Da Silva,
  • Jessica Silva,
  • Lilian Casatti,
  • Renato de Romero,
  • Francisco Leonardo Garro,
  • Pedro Aquino,
  • Paulo Santos Pompeu,
  • Paulo De Marco
Thiago Bernardi Vieira
Universidade Federal do Pará - Campus Altamira

Corresponding Author:vieiratb@ufpa.br

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Liriann Chrisley Da Silva
Universidade Federal do Pará - Campus Altamira
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Jessica Silva
Universidade Federal do Pará - Campus Altamira
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Lilian Casatti
Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho - Campus de Sao Jose do Rio Preto
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Renato de Romero
Instituto Federal de Alagoas, Campus Marechal Deodoro
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Francisco Leonardo Garro
Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Goiás
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Pedro Aquino
Universidade de Brasília
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Paulo Santos Pompeu
Universidade Federal de Lavras
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Paulo De Marco
Universidade Federal de Goiás
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Abstract

The Species-Sorting concept, one of the models developed to explain patterns in metacommunity structure, suggests that relationships between biological communities and environmental conditions is the basic means of the species selection processes. A second concept is Neutral Theory, and the idea of neutral dynamics underpinning metacommunity structure, cannot be overlooked. The third mechanism is the Mass-Effect concept, that focuses on the interaction between environmental condition and neutral effects. In the present study, we partitioned fish communities in streams between niche and neutral theory concepts, identifying the best representation of metacommunity structure, and assessed if linear and hydrographic distance were equivalent in the representation of neutral processes. The result points to the importance of species sorting mechanisms in structuring fish communities with neutral processes best represented by the linear distances. These results are important for the fish fauna conservation leading to three considerations: (i) the variation of the landscape and habitat is important for the stream fish, (ii) the natural barriers are an important landscape component to be considered, and (iii) the artificial barriers (dams and impoundments) need to be planned taking in account the catchment basin as the landscape unit.