Browsing by Author "Dievart, Alexia"
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- Intraspecific diversity in an ecological engineer functionally trumps interspecific diversity in shaping community structurePublication . Nicastro, Katy; McQuaid, Christopher D.; Dievart, Alexia; Zardi, Gerardo, ICan intraspecific diversity functionally supersede interspecific diversity? Recent studies have established the ecological effects of intraspecific variation on a number of ecosystem dynamics including resilience and productivity and we hypothesised that they may functionally exceed those of species diversity. We focused on a coastal ecosystem dominated by two coexisting bioengineering mussel species, one of which, Perna perna, displays two distinct phylogeographic lineages. A manipulative field experiment revealed greater habitat structural complexity and a more benign microscale environment within beds of the eastern lineage than those of the western lineage or the second species (Mytilus galloprovincialis)