Figure 3
Temporal variation of metacommunity types of the bacterial and microeukaryotic datasets. Within the dotted lines (−1.96 < coherence z-value < 1.96) metacommunities are randomly structured. Positive significant values (coherence z-value > 1.96) indicate that species’ distribution occur in response to environmental variation. Significantly negative coherence (coherence z-value < −1.96) indicates checkerboard distribution. The greyscale represents species turnover (z-value; number of observed replacements compared to a null distribution) where positive values indicate species replacements in response to environmental variation and negative values nested species distributions caused by species losses. The size of the symbols denotes the Morisita’s index (boundary clumping) which shows the degree of spatial distribution of species in a metacommunity where lower numbers indicate over-dispersed boundaries and higher numbers clumped boundaries. Vertical dashed lines refer to the division between the dry and wet period.
