Journal of Ecosystem & Ecography
Open Access

Research Article

A Phenological Mid-Domain Analysis of Non-Native and Native Species Recruitment Richness

¹Earth Resources Technologies, NOAA Restoration Center, 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA

²Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, 647 Contees Wharf Road, Edgewater, MD 21037, USA

³Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, 1080 Shennecossett Road, Groton, CT 06340, USA

*Corresponding Author:

James F. Reinhardt
Earth Resources Technologies
NOAA Restoration Center
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA
E-mail: JamesFReinhardt@hotmail.com

Received date: August 11, 2012; Accepted date: September 24, 2012; Published date: September 26, 2012

Citation: Reinhardt JF, Osman RW, Whitlatch RB (2012) A Phenological Mid-Domain Analysis of Non-Native and Native Species Recruitment Richness. J Ecosyst Ecogr 2:118. doi:10.4172/2157-7625.1000118

Copyright: © 2012 Reinhardt JF, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and and source are credited.

A mid-domain model was used to examine differences in patterns of species recruitment diversity between native and non-native species groups within shallow sub-tidal epifaunal communities of southern New England. A mid-domain model is a stochastic null model that predicts species richness patterns within a bounded domain. Deviations from the mid-domain model were examined to assess: 1) if each species group’s recruitment diversity differed from the mid-domain model; and 2) if there were differences in the patterns of deviation between groups. In general, the shape of mid-domain null was correlated to empirical patterns of recruitment diversity (i.e., mid-summer peaks in recruitment diversity) although among-year variation occurred in both the pattern of recruitment diversity and the level of fit. Akiake’s information criterion was used to determine if the mid-domain effect contributed to linear regression model predictions of phenological species recruitment patterns. We found distinct differences between the level of fit between native and non-native species groups. Native species did not significantly differ from the mid-domain null in five of seven years examined, while non-native species were significantly different in all years but two. Non-native species also showed a much weaker correlation to the mid-domain model and the seasonal water temperature signal. Collectively, this evidence supports the hypothesis that native and non-native species have different factors controlling the timing of their recruitment. Mid-domain nulls proved to be useful in the analysis of species richness patterns along temporal axes and provide a valuable baseline for further analysis.

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