Environmental filters may mitigate biotic homogenization in created wetlands

Effective wetland creation is critical for mitigating the ongoing extinction crisis and supporting some of the world’s most at-risk species. However, many created wetlands demonstrate biotic homogenization associated with generalist colonizers, potentially excluding the species most in need of wetland habitat. To help break this paradigm, we sought to identify the factors most strongly associated with community turnover and broader patterns of community variation. We conducted comprehensive inventories of the aquatic communities of 23 compensatory wetlands in the lower peninsula of Michigan, USA, and used both linear and non-linear analytical approaches to identify the temporal, landscape, and habitat characteristics most strongly associated with community dissimilarity. For both plant and faunal assemblages, wetland age and a related pattern of solar transmission were associated with strong, non-linear responses in community turnover. Broader variation in plant assemblages was associated with temporal characteristics, while faunal variation was associated with landscape and spatial characteristics. This study adds to the growing body of restoration literature and helps identify the most important factors for creating dissimilar wetland communities, potentially helping mitigate species loss during the ‘Homogenocene.’