Processos estocásticos predominantemente conduzem a montagem da diversidade taxonômica e funcional da comunidade de moluscos em ambientes hipersalinos

Abstract

One way of understanding how factors and ecological processes shape the biological communities along the environmental gradients is by their taxonomic and functional structure. Such diversity measures describe an independent aspect of community structure in order to provide a broader view of the processes that govern local diversity (alpha diversity) and regional diversity (beta diversity). Therefore, this work proposes to evaluate (i) the relationship between environmental factors and abundances within the traits in order to understand the responses of the genera of molluscs, and (ii) the ecological processes (deterministic and / or stochastic) acting (iii) the influence of the environmental heterogeneity of hypersaline environments on the structure and taxonomic and functional diversity of the mollusc community. The study was carried out in three hypersaline environments, located in Rio Grande do Norte. In each hypersaline environment two upstream subtidal zones (zones I and II) and two subtidal downstream (foz) were defined (zones III and IV). In each zone three points were sampled, with three sample units each. Physical, chemical, sedimentological and biological (malacophauna) parameters were collected at each point. Thus, the main patterns demonstrated in this study were the absence of significant relations of taxonomic and functional indexes (alpha and beta) with environmental gradients, although the environmental variation has explained the taxonomic distribution of the mollusc community. Moreover, both approaches, Taxonomy and functional, were strongly correlated. When assessing ecological process which governs the community in α and β-functional components, it was observed that it is predominantly governed by the stochastic process. Therefore, it is concluded that functional measures do not respond to environmental variation in hypersaline environments, but the taxonomic ones responded.