Resistance of rocky intertidal communities to oceanic climate fluctuations

Fig 6. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) plots depicting Bray-Curtis dissimilarity among intertidal communities in high (a & d), mid (b & e), and low (c & f) intertidal community structure in Oregon and northern California from 2006–2021. Left panels (a-c) depict dissimilarities among years, with each data point representing a community at either the quadrat level (a & b, 0.5 x 0.5m) or transect level (c, the average of ~10 0.5 x 0.5m quadrats). Left panel (a-c) vector overlays (in black) depict species contributing most strongly to within-cape similarity in SIMPER analyses (S4d-S4f Table in S1 Appendix). Right panels (d-e) depict community trajectories over time with each data point representing the centroid of community structure for each site and year (i.e. centroids from left panels). We calculated the length and absolute angle of these trajectories to estimate rate and direction of community shifts (respectively) for subsequent analyses. Right panel (d-e) vector overlays depict the association between the environmental variables and community dissimilarity. Right panel (d-e) colors depict Cape Foulweather sites in blues, Cape Perpetua sites in reds, Cape Blanco sites in greens, and Cape Mendocino sites in purples. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297697.g006 PLOS ONE Resistance of rocky intertidal communities PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297697 May 29, 2024 14 / 34