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AbstractPatterns in species × sample tables of communities depend above all on the organisms of the data sets and the conditions involved. Patterns that surpass individual sets are of special interest. Our question, looking for a shared pattern in 12 sets, is if relative abundances among species are independent of the sample, or formulated alternatively, if species have abundances that are correlated with total abundances over samples. For exploration we study the overdispersion/aggregation of the data. A relatively high variation in the total abundances of samples is noticed, indicating an effect of environmental variation. Overdispersion imposes constraints on the accommodation of relatively high abundance values to samples with a relatively low total abundance. The null hypothesis of 'no association' is modelled by permutation/resampling of the data at the level of the individual. A correlation study of actual and permuted sets is performed. All actual sets contain a significant number of species that defy our question. These species flourish when many do not. The relation of our question with issues in theoretical ecology, such as the assumption of a neutral effect of environmental conditions and/or of neutral characteristics of species, is discussed.

Many of the world's wetlands may be profoundly affected by climate change over the coming decades. Although wetland managers may have little control over the causes of climate change, they can help to counteract its effects through local measures. This is because direct anthropogenic impacts, such as water extraction and nutrient loading, work in concert with climate change to damage wetlands. Control of these local stressors may therefore ameliorate undesired effects of climate change, such as a shift towards dominance by invasive floating plants, increasingly frequent cyanobacteria blooms, or extinction of key species. Using the iconic Doñana wetlands in Spain as a case study, we illustrate how the concept of creating a "safe operating space" may be implemented to better ensure that ecosystems do not surpass thresholds for collapse during an era of global change. ; AJG was supported by a WIMEK grant for a research stay at WUR. EPM was supported by a JAE DOCTORES 2010 contract funded by the European Union (European Social Fund, ESF2007-­2013) and the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness, as well as the EU FP7 project FAST (grant 607131). Funding was also provided by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement number 641762 to the ECOPOTENTIAL project. C Perennou provided helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Maps were made using data from CHG­ uadalquivir (www.chguadalquivir.es/ide) with QGIS (www.qgis.org) and the Google Maps API. ; PDF 9 pages