Disentangling abiotic and biotic mechanisms behind the formation of heterospecific Nearctic-Neotropical shorebird flocks
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Disentangling abiotic and biotic mechanisms behind the formation of heterospecific Nearctic‑Neotropical shorebird flocks Cesar Cestari1,2 · Cristina da Silva Gonçalves2 · Celine de Melo1 Received: 29 April 2020 / Accepted: 16 September 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Defense, vigilance, and optimal foraging are frequently related to the formation of flocks in birds. Few studies concerning long-distance migrant shorebirds analyzed whether phylogeny and ecological similarities of species are associated with the formation of heterospecific flocks. Here, we explore (1) the niche conservatism theory, (2) the competitionrelatedness hypothesis, and (3) the niche construction hypothesis to explain the formation of wintering Nearctic-Neotropical heterospecific shorebird flocks in the southeastern coast of Brazil. In the first, closely-related species keep their ecological traits over time. In the last two hypotheses, ecological dissimilar and distant-related species may coexist due to strong biotic interactions. Our results discard the influence of relatedness between species and/or phylogenetic filtering signals that could act in the formation of heterospecific flocks. Co-participation of species in flocks is explained by similarities in body weight and tarsus length, which invokes the niche construction hypothesis. Probably, some similar-sized and niche-constructing species are relocating in space and changing the environment that they experience to optimize individual capacity to flee from predators. From an ecological perspective, numerous phenotypically similar species with redundant roles could lead to greater resilience of the community under anthropogenic disturbances. From an evolutionary perspective, different species with similar phenotypes may diminish costs of activity matching and augment individual fitness. Keywords Behavior · Biodiversity · Competition · Coast · Ecological niche · Facilitation
* Cesar Cestari [email protected] 1
Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU), Campus Umuarama – Bloco 2D. Avenida Pará, 1720, Uberlândia, MG CEP 1720, Brazil
2
Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” (UNESP), 24‑A, 1515. CEP, Rio Claro, SP 13506‑900, Brazil
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Evolutionary Ecology
Introduction The understanding of niche-related traits among species is often a key to interpret biotic and abiotic mechanisms behind community assemblies (Darwin 1859; Hutchinson 1957; Holt and Gaines 1992; Che et al. 2019). The niche conservatism theory predicts that species keep their fundamental niches and related ecological traits over time (Harvey and Pagel 1991; Peterson et al. 1999), thereby abiotic filtering effects may assemble species with similar morphological/physiological functional traits (Webb et al. 2002; Wiens and Graham 2005; Wiens et al. 2010). If these assumptions are supported for closely-related species, then phylogenetic diversity adequately estimates the functional diversity of an asse
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