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Tuesday "Noon" Seminar: October 24Jason Pither on "Ecological guilds challenge conventional interpretations of beta diversity-environment relationships within metacommunities"
12:30-1:45 p.m. in Biosciences West (map of building location), Room 208 |
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Talk Abstract Few ecological patterns are more recognizable and more important to applied research than species composition changing predictably along environmental gradients. Precisely how this pattern relates to the fundamental niches and dynamics of individual species remains unclear. According to conventional wisdom, species sort out predictably and individualistically along gradients in accordance with a distinct optima (DO) scenario of fundamental niche differentiation. However, the DO scenario could arguably be considered as unrealistic as neutral theories’ hypothesis that all metacommunity inhabitants share one identical fundamental niche. From this standpoint, the following question arises: could significant correlations between beta diversity (variation in species composition) and the environment emerge from metacommunities despite the presence of some or many equivalent species? Using spatially-explicit simulations of competitive metacommunities, we discovered that they can. Specifically, guild scenarios of FND, which comprised many equivalent species, produced realized niche and beta diversity patterns that were similar to – and in many respects, more realistic than – those produced by DO scenarios. These results have wide-ranging implications, because an enormous body of both basic and applied ecology research follows without question conventional perspectives on the origins of beta diversity-environment relationships. |
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