Deforestation strengthens environmental filtering and competitive exclusion in Neotropical streams and rivers

Understanding how anthropization impacts the assembly of species onto communities is pivotal to go beyond the observation of biodiversity changes and reveal how disturbances affect the environmental and biotic processes shaping biodiversity. Here, we propose a simple framework to measure the assembly processes underpinning functional convergence/divergence patterns. We applied this framework to northern Amazonian fish communities inventoried using environmental DNA in 35 stream sites and 64 river sites. We found that the harsh and unstable environmental conditions characterizing streams conveyed communities towards functional convergence, by filtering traits related to food acquisition and, to a lower extent, dispersal. Such environmental filtering also strengthened competition by excluding species having less competitive food acquisition traits. Instead, random species assembly was more marked in river communities, which may be explained by the downstream position of rivers facilitating the dispersion of species. Although fish assembly rules differed between streams and river fish communities, anthropogenic disturbances reduced functional divergence in both ecosystems, with a reinforcement of both environmental filtering and weaker competitor exclusion. This may explain the substantial biodiversity alterations observed under slight deforestation levels in Neotropical freshwater ecosystems and underlines their vulnerability to anthropic disturbances that not only affect species persistence but also modify community assembly rules.