Shared patterns of species turnover between seaweeds and seed plants break down at increasing distances from the sea

Carlos F D Gurgel; Thomas Wernberg; Mads S Thomsen; Bayden D Russell; Paul Adam; Jonathan M Waters; Sean D Connell

doi:10.1002/ece3.893

Shared patterns of species turnover between seaweeds and seed plants break down at increasing distances from the sea

Ecol Evol. 2014 Jan;4(1):27-34. doi: 10.1002/ece3.893. Epub 2013 Dec 5.

Authors

Carlos F D Gurgel¹, Thomas Wernberg², Mads S Thomsen³, Bayden D Russell⁴, Paul Adam⁵, Jonathan M Waters⁶, Sean D Connell⁴

Affiliations

¹ The Environment Institute, Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide DX 650-418, Adelaide 5005, South Australia, Australia ; Plant Biodiversity Centre, State Herbarium of South Australia GPO Box 1047, Adelaide 5001, South Australia, Australia ; Aquatic Sciences, South Australian Research and Development Institute PO Box 120, Henley Beach 5022, South Australia, Australia.
² UWA Oceans Institute & School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia Crawley, 6009, Western Australia, Australia.
³ UWA Oceans Institute & School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia Crawley, 6009, Western Australia, Australia ; Department of Marine Ecology, National Environmental Research Institute 4000, Roskilde, Denmark.
⁴ The Environment Institute, Southern Seas Ecology Laboratories, University of Adelaide DP 418, Adelaide 5005, South Australia, Australia.
⁵ School of Biological, Earth, and Environmental Sciences University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
⁶ Department of Zoology, University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand.

Abstract

We tested for correlations in the degree of spatial similarity between algal and terrestrial plants communities along 5500 km of temperate Australian coastline and whether the strength of correlation weakens with increasing distance from the coast. We identified strong correlations between macroalgal and terrestrial plant communities within the first 100 km from shore, where the strength of these marine-terrestrial correlations indeed weakens with increasing distance inland. As such, our results suggest that marine-driven community homogenization processes decompose with increasing distance from the shore toward inland. We speculate that the proximity to the marine environment produces lower levels of community turnover on land, and this effect decreases progressively farther inland. Our analysis suggests underlying ecological and evolutionary processes that give rise to continental-scale biogeographic influence from sea to land.

Keywords: Australia; biogeography; connectivity; herbarium; macroalgae; seed plants.