Precipitation regime drives key alterations in subtropical stream fish community assembly and functional trait distribution across a major rainfall gradient
Shifting precipitation patterns associated with global climate change are significantly impacting lotic ecosystems worldwide. To understand how these changes influence stream fish community assembly, we conducted a space-for-time study under a steep natural rainfall gradient in the coastal plain reg...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Taylor & Francis Group
2025-12-01
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| Series: | Journal of Freshwater Ecology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/02705060.2025.2486262 |
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| author | Christopher M. Groff Sean K. Kinard J. Derek Hogan Matt R. Whiles Amber J. Ulseth Bradley A. Strickland Fernando Carvallo Victoria Jenkins Alexander T. Solis Desiree A. Groff Christopher Frazier Connor L. Brown Christopher J. Patrick |
| author_facet | Christopher M. Groff Sean K. Kinard J. Derek Hogan Matt R. Whiles Amber J. Ulseth Bradley A. Strickland Fernando Carvallo Victoria Jenkins Alexander T. Solis Desiree A. Groff Christopher Frazier Connor L. Brown Christopher J. Patrick |
| author_sort | Christopher M. Groff |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Shifting precipitation patterns associated with global climate change are significantly impacting lotic ecosystems worldwide. To understand how these changes influence stream fish community assembly, we conducted a space-for-time study under a steep natural rainfall gradient in the coastal plain region of Texas (USA). Leveraging multi-year intra-annual fish surveys and environmental data from nine streams, we assessed the effects of precipitation regime on functional diversity and trait distributions, focusing on the relative importance of environmental filtering, interspecific interaction, and individual environmental drivers. Fish communities transitioned from functionally underdispersed to overdispersed with increasing precipitation rate, suggesting that filtering was a key assembly mechanism in more arid communities, while species interaction played a more important role under wetter climates. Deviations in functional dispersion across the rainfall gradient were best explained by changes in relative distributions of traits (functional evenness) as opposed to losses or additions of traits (functional richness) between sites, and the best predictors of these deviations were mean annual rainfall, low-flow frequency, and prevalence of hypoxic conditions. Proportional abundances of hypoxia-tolerant, herbivorous taxa within communities were associated mainly with the same predictors, illustrating the importance of these fishes’ increasing prevalence with increased aridity. Relationships between their abundances and benthic primary producer densities may also point to changes in grazing pressure, possibly stemming from top-down trophic processes. The shift from communities with low functional diversity dominated by hypoxia-tolerant, herbivorous taxa to more diverse assemblages as rainfall rates increased was non-linear, which may represent an important precipitation-driven threshold in community assembly. Our observations across this spatial rainfall gradient may translate to similar community-level changes in lotic ecosystems experiencing temporally shifting precipitation patterns, ultimately leading to increased understanding of relationships between functional trait distributions and climate, as well as providing valuable knowledge for predicting the impacts of changing precipitation regimes in freshwater ecosystems worldwide. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-1e698b8d449a466588a37a90cc79d548 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 0270-5060 2156-6941 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-12-01 |
| publisher | Taylor & Francis Group |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Journal of Freshwater Ecology |
| spelling | doaj-art-1e698b8d449a466588a37a90cc79d5482025-08-20T02:11:34ZengTaylor & Francis GroupJournal of Freshwater Ecology0270-50602156-69412025-12-0140110.1080/02705060.2025.2486262Precipitation regime drives key alterations in subtropical stream fish community assembly and functional trait distribution across a major rainfall gradientChristopher M. Groff0Sean K. Kinard1J. Derek Hogan2Matt R. Whiles3Amber J. Ulseth4Bradley A. Strickland5Fernando Carvallo6Victoria Jenkins7Alexander T. Solis8Desiree A. Groff9Christopher Frazier10Connor L. Brown11Christopher J. Patrick12Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VADepartment of Biological Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VADepartment of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TXDepartment of Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FLDepartment of Biological Sciences, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TXDepartment of Biological Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VADepartment of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TXDepartment of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TXDepartment of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TXDepartment of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TXDepartment of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TXDepartment of Biological Sciences, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TXDepartment of Biological Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VAShifting precipitation patterns associated with global climate change are significantly impacting lotic ecosystems worldwide. To understand how these changes influence stream fish community assembly, we conducted a space-for-time study under a steep natural rainfall gradient in the coastal plain region of Texas (USA). Leveraging multi-year intra-annual fish surveys and environmental data from nine streams, we assessed the effects of precipitation regime on functional diversity and trait distributions, focusing on the relative importance of environmental filtering, interspecific interaction, and individual environmental drivers. Fish communities transitioned from functionally underdispersed to overdispersed with increasing precipitation rate, suggesting that filtering was a key assembly mechanism in more arid communities, while species interaction played a more important role under wetter climates. Deviations in functional dispersion across the rainfall gradient were best explained by changes in relative distributions of traits (functional evenness) as opposed to losses or additions of traits (functional richness) between sites, and the best predictors of these deviations were mean annual rainfall, low-flow frequency, and prevalence of hypoxic conditions. Proportional abundances of hypoxia-tolerant, herbivorous taxa within communities were associated mainly with the same predictors, illustrating the importance of these fishes’ increasing prevalence with increased aridity. Relationships between their abundances and benthic primary producer densities may also point to changes in grazing pressure, possibly stemming from top-down trophic processes. The shift from communities with low functional diversity dominated by hypoxia-tolerant, herbivorous taxa to more diverse assemblages as rainfall rates increased was non-linear, which may represent an important precipitation-driven threshold in community assembly. Our observations across this spatial rainfall gradient may translate to similar community-level changes in lotic ecosystems experiencing temporally shifting precipitation patterns, ultimately leading to increased understanding of relationships between functional trait distributions and climate, as well as providing valuable knowledge for predicting the impacts of changing precipitation regimes in freshwater ecosystems worldwide.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/02705060.2025.2486262Fish communitieslotic ecosystemsfunctional traitscommunity assemblyclimate changerainfall gradients |
| spellingShingle | Christopher M. Groff Sean K. Kinard J. Derek Hogan Matt R. Whiles Amber J. Ulseth Bradley A. Strickland Fernando Carvallo Victoria Jenkins Alexander T. Solis Desiree A. Groff Christopher Frazier Connor L. Brown Christopher J. Patrick Precipitation regime drives key alterations in subtropical stream fish community assembly and functional trait distribution across a major rainfall gradient Journal of Freshwater Ecology Fish communities lotic ecosystems functional traits community assembly climate change rainfall gradients |
| title | Precipitation regime drives key alterations in subtropical stream fish community assembly and functional trait distribution across a major rainfall gradient |
| title_full | Precipitation regime drives key alterations in subtropical stream fish community assembly and functional trait distribution across a major rainfall gradient |
| title_fullStr | Precipitation regime drives key alterations in subtropical stream fish community assembly and functional trait distribution across a major rainfall gradient |
| title_full_unstemmed | Precipitation regime drives key alterations in subtropical stream fish community assembly and functional trait distribution across a major rainfall gradient |
| title_short | Precipitation regime drives key alterations in subtropical stream fish community assembly and functional trait distribution across a major rainfall gradient |
| title_sort | precipitation regime drives key alterations in subtropical stream fish community assembly and functional trait distribution across a major rainfall gradient |
| topic | Fish communities lotic ecosystems functional traits community assembly climate change rainfall gradients |
| url | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/02705060.2025.2486262 |
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