Co-occurrence analyses show that non-random community structure is disrupted by fire in two groups of soil arthropods (Isopoda Oniscidea and Collembola)

In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that natural catastrophes may destroy non-random community structure in natural assemblages of organisms. As a study system, we selected fire as the catastrophic event, and two groups of soil arthropods (Collembola and Isopoda Oniscidea) as target organisms. By co-occurrence analyses and Monte Carlo simulations of niche overlap analysis (C-score, with fixed-equiprobable model; RA2 and RA3 algorithms) we evaluated whether the community structure of these two groups were random/non-random at three unburnt sites and at three neighbour burnt sites that were devastated by a large-scale fire in summer 2000. Both taxa experienced a remarkable reduction in the number of species sampled in burnt versus unburnt sites, but the difference among sites was not statistically significant for Oniscidea. We determined that community structure was clearly non-random at the unburnt sites for both Collembola (according to RA3 algorithm) and Isopoda Oniscidea (according to co-occurrence analysis) and that, as predicted by theory, the catastrophic event did deeply alter the community structure by removing the non-random organization of the species interactions. We also observed a shift from segregation to aggregation/randomness in soil arthropods communities affected by fire, a pattern that was similar to that observed in natural communities of organisms perturbed by the introduction of alien species, thus indicating that this pattern may be generalizable when alteration of communities may occur.