What Shapes the Phylogenetic Structure of Anuran Communities in a Seasonal Environment? The Influence of Determinism at Regional Scale to Stochasticity or Antagonistic Forces at Local Scale.

• Main Authors: Clarissa de Araújo Martins, Fabio de Oliveira Roque, Bráulio A Santos, Vanda Lúcia Ferreira, Christine Strüssmann, Walfrido Moraes Tomas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2015-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130075

Ecological communities are structured by both deterministic and stochastic processes. We investigated phylogenetic patterns at regional and local scales to understand the influences of seasonal processes in shaping the structure of anuran communities in the southern Pantanal wetland, Brazil. We assessed the phylogenetic structure at different scales, using the Net Relatedness Index (NRI), the Nearest Taxon Index (NTI), and phylobetadiversity indexes, as well as a permutation test, to evaluate the effect of seasonality. The anuran community was represented by a non-random set of species with a high degree of phylogenetic relatedness at the regional scale. However, at the local scale the phylogenetic structure of the community was weakly related with the seasonality of the system, indicating that oriented stochastic processes (e.g. colonization, extinction and ecological drift) and/or antagonist forces drive the structure of such communities in the southern Pantanal.