title: Thirty-year recovery of mollusc communities after nuclear experimentations on Fangataufa atoll (Tuamotu, French Polynesia).
abstract: A 30-year study of temporal changes in gastropod community structure on the reefs of a Pacific Ocean atoll (Fangataufa, Tuamotu Archipelago) subjected to atmospheric nuclear tests during the 1960s offered the opportunity for an otherwise impossible field experiment that could help ecologists understand mollusc primary succession. Reef molluscs were partly or entirely wiped out by the heat of the nuclear tests and the reefs were recolonized by ocean larvae. On all reefs, community composition before the tests was very different from what it evolved to afterwards. A new method of analysis was developed to study the temporal variation in community composition before versus after the tests (temporal beta diversity). Analyses showed that community compositions diverged through time among the reefs. Only some species can survive the harsh conditions of supralittoral zones, so the same species recolonized them; environmental filtering controlled the development of the new communities. In the reef flat and edge zones, differences in community composition seem to be the result of neutral stochastic colonization by larvae coming from the open ocean. All reefs developed a community composition quite different from that before the nuclear tests.
authors.affiliation: Département de Sciences Biologiques, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3C 3J7 pierre.legendre@umontreal.ca.
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Legendre
authors.affiliation: USR 3278, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique-École Pratique des Hautes Études-Université de Perpignan (CNRS-EPHE-UPVD), Centre de Biologie et d'Écologie tropicale et méditerranéenne, Université de Perpignan, 58 avenue Paul Alduy, Perpignan Cedex 66860, France Centre de Recherches insulaires et Observatoire de l'Environnement (CRIOBE), B.P. 1013, Moorea, French Polynesia LabEx Corail, 58 avenue Paul Alduy, Perpignan Cedex 66860, France.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Salvat
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D057894:Coral Reefs; D008974:Mollusca / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects*; D054043:Nuclear Weapons; D011114:Polynesia; D000069079:Radiation Exposure; D011834:Radiation Monitoring; D012621:Seasons
keywords: local contributions to beta diversity; long-term monitoring; mollusc communities; nuclear tests; temporal beta diversity