Niche partitioning in a periphyton metacommunity peaks at intermediate species richness in midsized rivers

The trait-based partitioning of species plays a critical role in biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships. This niche partitioning drives and depends on community structure, yet this link remains elusive in the context of a metacommunity, where local community assembly is dictated by regional dispersal alongside local environmental conditions. Hence, elucidating the coupling of niche partitioning and community structure needs spatially explicit studies. Such studies are particularly necessary in river networks, where local habitats are highly connected by unidirectional water flow in a spatially complex network structure and frequent disturbance makes community structure strongly dependent on recolonization. Here, we show that taxonomic turnover among periphyton communities colonizing deployed bricks (microhabitats) at multiple sampling sites (local habitats) in a river network came along with a turnover in traits. This niche partitioning showed a hump-shaped relationship with richness of periphyton communities, which increased along river size. Our observations suggest downstream dispersal along the river network to increase the regional metacommunity pool, which then ensures local colonization by taxa possessing diverse traits allowing them to efficiently partition into environmentally different microhabitats. However, at the most downstream sites, the excessive dispersal of widespread generalists drove mass effects which inflated richness with taxa that co-occupied several microhabitats and swamped niche partitioning. Further, efficient niche partitioning depended on communities rich in rare taxa, an indication for the importance of specialists. Alarmingly, richness and rare taxa declined with high phosphorus concentrations and conductivity, respectively, two environmental variables which potentially reflected anthropogenic activity.