Exploring the spatio-temporal dynamics of disturbed metacommunities: A mechanistic modeling approach to species resistance and resilience strategies in drying river networks

Understanding how natural disturbance regimes drive biodiversity is a major research challenge. Yet, how species’ ecological strategies and disturbance regimes shape the structure of metacommunities across space and time remains poorly understood. In drying river networks (DRNs), drying events disrupt both local habitat within reach and connectivity among flowing sections. Drying-rewetting cycles alter two major mechanisms: ecological drift and dispersal dynamics. In this study, we present a mechanistic metacommunity model that simulates species’ ability to withstand drying (resistance strategy) and to recolonize communities after rewetting (resilience strategy characterised by species’ dispersal rate and dispersal distance). Coupling this model with realistic hydrological models, we simulated community dynamics in four European DRNs encompassing variable flow intermittence regimes. We investigate the relative importance of flow intermittence, network connectivity and species’ ecological strategies in shaping spatio-temporal meta-community patterns.