A compositional turnover zone of biogeographical magnitude within lowland Amazonia

Aim To assess the relative roles of geologically defined terrain types ( environmental heterogeneity) and a major river ( physical dispersal barrier) as predictors of ecological structuring and biogeographical differentiation within Amazonian forests.Location Western Brazilian Amazonia, where the Jurua river and its terraces cross a 1000-km-long boundary between two geological formations ( the Solimoes and Ica Formations).Methods We sampled a 500-km stretch of the Jurua with 71 transects ( 5 m by 500 m) that spanned both the river and the geological boundary. All transects were inventoried for pteridophytes ( ferns and lycophytes) and Melastomataceae, and a subset of 39 transects also for palms and Zingiberales. Three surface soil samples were collected from each transect. The data were analysed using ordinations, regression trees, indicator species analyses and Mantel tests.Results All plant groups showed congruent species turnover between geologically defined terrain types, but little evidence of isolation by the river or geographical distance. Soil cation concentration differed between the Solimoes Formation and other terrain types and emerged as the main explanatory factor for species turnover. A large proportion of the plant species were significant indicators for specific parts of the soil cation concentration gradient, and these edaphic associations were congruent with those found in other parts of Amazonia. Pteridophytes had a larger proportion of species in the cation-rich soils than the other plant groups did, and palms had a higher proportion of generalists.Main conclusions The geological boundary between the Solimoes and Ica formations is confirmed as significant floristic turnover zone. As it runs in a north-south orientation for more than 1000 km, the edaphic differences associated with this boundary have wide-ranging implications for speciation and biogeographical patterns in Amazonia

Using digital soil maps to infer edaphic affinities of plant species in Amazonia: Problems and prospects

Amazonia combines semi-continental size with difficult access, so both current ranges of species and their ability to cope with environmental change have to be inferred from sparse field data. Although efficient techniques for modeling species distributions on the basis of a small number of species occurrences exist, their success depends on the availability of relevant environmental data layers. Soil data are important in this context, because soil properties have been found to determine plant occurrence patterns in Amazonian lowlands at all spatial scales. Here we evaluate the potential for this purpose of three digital soil maps that are freely available online: SOTERLAC, HWSD, and SoilGrids. We first tested how well they reflect local soil cation concentration as documented with 1,500 widely distributed soil samples. We found that measured soil cation concentration differed by up to two orders of magnitude between sites mapped into the same soil class. The best map-based predictor of local soil cation concentration was obtained with a regression model combining soil classes from HWSD with cation exchange capacity (CEC) from SoilGrids. Next, we evaluated to what degree the known edaphic affinities of thirteen plant species (as documented with field data from 1,200 of the soil sample sites) can be inferred from the soil maps. The species segregated clearly along the soil cation concentration gradient in the field, but only partially along the model-estimated cation concentration gradient, and hardly at all along the mapped CEC gradient. The main problems reducing the predictive ability of the soil maps were insufficient spatial resolution and/or georeferencing errors combined with thematic inaccuracy and absence of the most relevant edaphic variables. Addressing these problems would provide better models of the edaphic environment for ecological studies in Amazonia

Broad Scale Distribution of Ferns and Lycophytes along Environmental Gradients in Central and Northern Amazonia, Brazil

Establishing which factors determine species distributions is of major relevance for practical applications such as conservation planning. The Amazonian lowlands exhibit considerable internal heterogeneity that is not apparent in existing vegetation maps. We used ferns as a model group to study patterns in plant species distributions and community composition at regional and landscape scales. Fern species composition and environmental data were collected in 109 plots of 250 x 2 m distributed among four sites in Brazilian Amazonia. Interplot distances varied from 1 to ca 670 km. When floristically heterogeneous datasets were analyzed, the use of an extended Sorensen dissimilarity index rather than the traditional Sorensen index improved model fit and made interpretation of the results easier. Major factors associated with species composition varied among sites, difference in cation concentration was a strong predictor of floristic dissimilarity in those sites with pronounced heterogeneity in cation concentration. Difference in clay content was the most relevant variable in sites with uniform cation concentrations. In every case, environmental differences were invariably better than geographic distances in predicting species compositional differences. Our results are consistent with the ideas that: (1) the relative predictive capacity of the explanatory variables depend on the relative lengths of the observed gradients; and (2) environmental gradients can be hierarchically structured such that gradients occur inside gradients. Therefore, site-specific relationships among variables can mask the bigger picture and make it more difficult to unravel the factors structuring plant communities in Amazonia

A systematic analysis of user experience dimensions for interactive digital narratives

Providing intelligent feedback to aid authoring has been proposed as a way to speed up authoring, give the author more control, and to enable the authoring of more complex interactive narratives. However, there is little research investigating what concrete feedback items would be useful for interactive digital narrative (IDN) creators. In this paper, we discuss potentially useful feedback items in relation to authoring goals and concerns. We perform a systematic literature review to make a list of concrete feedback items of interest related to the most emphasised concern of authoring - the effect of the interactive narrative on the user. We identify 47 User Experience (UX) dimensions in the IDN literature that could serve as useful feedback items, covering 8 categories - Agency, Cognition, Immersion, Affect, Drama, Rewards, Motivation and Dissonance. This list combines and untangles how different IDN researchers have interpreted and expressed interest in the complex idea of UX in the past decade and gives us insight into what concrete aspects of UX might be useful to estimate via automated feedback