Dry and wet periods drive rapid shifts in community assembly in an estuarine ecosystem

• DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13972
• Publication Date: 2017-12-07T17:05:01Z
• Authors: Andrew L. Chang; Christopher W. Brown; Jeffrey A. Crooks; Gregory M. Ruiz
• Keywords: Forcing (mathematics); Environmental change

The impacts of changing climate regimes on emergent processes controlling the assembly ecological communities remain poorly understood. Human alterations to water cycle in western United States have resulted greater interannual variability and more frequent severe extremes freshwater flow. specific mechanisms through which such regime shifts may alter rarely been demonstrated, baseline information current environmental variation is widely lacking for many habitats communities. Here, we used observations experiments show that winter salinity levels San Francisco Bay controls determining sessile invertebrate community composition during following summer. We found consistent changes response decadal-scale dry wet a 13-year period, producing strikingly different Our results match theoretical predictions major species forcing up threshold, beyond observed mass mortality wholesale replacement former community. These provide window into potential future changes, with altering by shifting relative influences distributions abundances. place these context historical projected Estuary.