Local environmental and spatial processes, not land use, shape the taxonomic and functional structure of pond zooplankton communities

Abstract Local environmental and spatial processes, in combination with surrounding land use, are considered key interacting mechanisms shaping the structure of aquatic communities. Traditional approaches have quantified the effects of environmental and spatial processes on community organization by focusing on its taxonomic facet only. The inclusion of functional traits, however, holds the potential to improve our ability to predict community responses to environmental filters, both biotic and abiotic, and major underlying spatial gradients. In this study, we evaluated the relative influence of local environmental conditions, land use and space on the taxonomic and functional composition of zooplankton communities across 47 ponds located in northwestern Spain. Variation partitioning showed that functional traits better reflected both local environmental and spatial effects on zooplankton community variation than species composition alone. Local environmental constraints were the primary source of community variation, although spatial effects also had a significant effect. However, large fractions of variation remained unexplained, a finding that is consistent with the prevalence of idiosyncratic and random stochastic events that have an effect on community structure. Land use did not play a significant role in explaining species distribution or functional trait variation, suggesting that changes in local environmental conditions may have masked the effects of land use on zooplankton community organization.