Cockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species

Abstract Facilitation cascades occur when multiple foundation species in a community are involved in a hierarchy of positive interactions, and consist of a primary facilitator which positively affects secondary facilitators, each supporting a suit of dependent species. There is no theoretical limit...

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Autores principales:	Eugeniy Yakovis, Anna Artemieva
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2017
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/563faa8596684334ab7070c7b87a6667
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:563faa8596684334ab7070c7b87a66672021-12-02T16:06:47ZCockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species10.1038/s41598-017-00260-22045-2322https://doaj.org/article/563faa8596684334ab7070c7b87a66672017-03-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-00260-2https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Facilitation cascades occur when multiple foundation species in a community are involved in a hierarchy of positive interactions, and consist of a primary facilitator which positively affects secondary facilitators, each supporting a suit of dependent species. There is no theoretical limit to the number of levels in a facilitation cascade, yet the existence of more than two has rarely been examined. We manipulated biogenic substrate produced by a primary facilitator (cockle shells) and a secondary facilitator (barnacles and their empty tests) in a space-limited subtidal community to test the hypothesis that solitary ascidians would be the third-level facilitator. In the field, most ascidians were found on barnacles, and most barnacles occupied cockle shells. To produce this pattern, barnacles could nurse ascidians (a longer ‘facilitation chain’) or outcompete them from cockle shells (a shorter chain). Experimental results clearly supported the nursing hypothesis providing evidence for a facilitation cascade with three hierarchical levels of foundation species. Our findings confirm that like predation and competition, positive interspecific interactions nest into multi-tier hierarchies with numerous levels. While the number of foundation species should increase community stability and resilience as it increases diversity and reduces environmental stress, facilitation chain length may have the opposite effect.Eugeniy YakovisAnna ArtemievaNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 7, Iss 1, Pp 1-11 (2017)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Eugeniy Yakovis Anna Artemieva Cockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species
description	Abstract Facilitation cascades occur when multiple foundation species in a community are involved in a hierarchy of positive interactions, and consist of a primary facilitator which positively affects secondary facilitators, each supporting a suit of dependent species. There is no theoretical limit to the number of levels in a facilitation cascade, yet the existence of more than two has rarely been examined. We manipulated biogenic substrate produced by a primary facilitator (cockle shells) and a secondary facilitator (barnacles and their empty tests) in a space-limited subtidal community to test the hypothesis that solitary ascidians would be the third-level facilitator. In the field, most ascidians were found on barnacles, and most barnacles occupied cockle shells. To produce this pattern, barnacles could nurse ascidians (a longer ‘facilitation chain’) or outcompete them from cockle shells (a shorter chain). Experimental results clearly supported the nursing hypothesis providing evidence for a facilitation cascade with three hierarchical levels of foundation species. Our findings confirm that like predation and competition, positive interspecific interactions nest into multi-tier hierarchies with numerous levels. While the number of foundation species should increase community stability and resilience as it increases diversity and reduces environmental stress, facilitation chain length may have the opposite effect.
format	article
author	Eugeniy Yakovis Anna Artemieva
author_facet	Eugeniy Yakovis Anna Artemieva
author_sort	Eugeniy Yakovis
title	Cockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species
title_short	Cockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species
title_full	Cockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species
title_fullStr	Cockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species
title_full_unstemmed	Cockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species
title_sort	cockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2017
url	https://doaj.org/article/563faa8596684334ab7070c7b87a6667
work_keys_str_mv	AT eugeniyyakovis cocklesbarnaclesandascidianscomposeasubtidalfacilitationcascadewithmultiplehierarchicallevelsoffoundationspecies AT annaartemieva cocklesbarnaclesandascidianscomposeasubtidalfacilitationcascadewithmultiplehierarchicallevelsoffoundationspecies
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Cockles, barnacles and ascidians compose a subtidal facilitation cascade with multiple hierarchical levels of foundation species

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