Bellisario Bruno, Camisa Federica, Abbattista Chiara, Cimmaruta Roberta
Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, Università degli Studi Della Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy.
PeerJ. 2019 Apr 23;7:e6786. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6786. eCollection 2019.
Although amphipods are key components of the macro-fauna associated with meadows, to date no studies focused on the structure and diversity of their assemblages across the whole Mediterranean Sea. Here, we applied a network approach based on modularity on a dataset mined from literature to identify biogeographic modules and to assess the biogeographic roles of associated localities. We also correlated the patterns evidenced with the biogeographic distribution of amphipod groups by means of a multivariate analysis. Modularity analysis highlighted four biogeographic modules bounded by the main Mediterranean biogeographic divides and evidenced a decrease in species diversity along a NW-SE gradient. Assemblages associated with Central-Western Mediterranean and, to a lesser extent, Tunisian modules showed the highest species richness and were identified as hubs, characterized by species with regional distributions that behave as source in a biogeographic context. The paleogeographic history of the host seagrass and the ecology of associated amphipods, both suggest the joint effect of species persistence and post-Last Glacial Maximum expansion in explaining the pattern of amphipod distribution in the Mediterranean Sea.
虽然双栖甲壳动物是与海草草甸相关的大型动物区系的关键组成部分，但迄今为止，尚无研究关注整个地中海地区其群落的结构和多样性。在此，我们基于模块性，对从文献中挖掘出的数据集应用网络方法，以识别生物地理模块并评估相关地点的生物地理作用。我们还通过多变量分析，将所证明的模式与双栖甲壳动物类群的生物地理分布相关联。模块性分析突出了由地中海主要生物地理分界线界定的四个生物地理模块，并证明物种多样性沿西北 - 东南梯度递减。与地中海中西部以及在较小程度上与突尼斯模块相关的群落显示出最高的物种丰富度，并被确定为枢纽，其特征是具有区域分布的物种，在生物地理背景下起到源的作用。宿主海草的古地理历史和相关双栖甲壳动物的生态学，都表明物种持久性和末次盛冰期后扩张的共同作用，可解释地中海双栖甲壳动物的分布模式。
