PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #36: Animal Community Ecology.
Presiding: S. Simonson
Tuesday, August 6. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Mesquite Room, Radisson.

The spatiotemporal structure of communities: how often do organisms at Konza Prairie exhibit nested subsets?

KAUFMAN, DAWN^*,1, KAUFMAN, DONALD¹, KAUFMAN, GLENNIS¹, ¹ Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS

ABSTRACT- The Konza Prairie Biological Station, a 3500-ha tallgrass prairie site in the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) system, contains a mosaic of discrete habitats (ranging from 6 ha to 230 ha) created by different fire disturbance regimes. Detailed distributional data have been collected for vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants, enabling us to examine different taxa for spatiotemporal structure. Our analyses were based on nested subset theory, in which a suite of assemblages is said to be nested if the species composition of successively less species-rich assemblages tend to be subsets of those assemblages that are more diverse. For example, small mammals and birds are spatially nested as are grasses at our focal site, Konza Prairie, but grasshoppers are not. Results from Konza are given context based on a diverse array of LTER datasets; nested subsets were tested for a variety of vertebrate and invertebrate taxa at various LTER sites. For example, Konza birds are temporally nested as are those of the Hubbard Brook LTER, but not of the Sevilleta LTER. Overall results are examined in light of organismal characteristics and site or environmental conditions. Approximately 50% of the organisms examined were spatially nested, whereas 75% were temporally nested. Where faunas are nested, movements between the "islands" are important for maintenance of the overall fauna. In addition to their ecological implications, results have ramifications for conservation.

KEY WORDS: community structure, nested subsets, species diversity, long-term ecological research