Felix May

TL;DR: A synthesis of methods based on rarefaction curves that allow more explicit analyses of spatial and sampling effects on biodiversity comparisons are described, using a case study of nutrient additions in experimental ponds to illustrate how this multi-dimensional and multi-scale perspective informs the responses of biodiversity to ecological drivers.

TL;DR: Analysis of 123 studies of assemblage-level abundances of focal taxa taken from multiple habitat fragments of varying size finds that increasing fragmentation has a disproportionately large effect on biodiversity loss, supporting the ecosystem decay hypothesis.

TL;DR: This work presents a framework that describes how different forms of stochasticity combine to provide underlying and predictable structure in diverse communities, and proposes next steps that ecologists might use to explore the role of stoChasticity for structuring communities in theoretical and empirical systems, and thereby enhance the understanding of community dynamics.

TL;DR: This article decompose scale-specific changes in richness into proximate components attributed to: 1) the species abundance distribution, 2) density of individuals, and 3) the spatial arrangement of individuals.

TL;DR: This study uses recent advances in inference for stochastic simulation models to evaluate the ability of a spatially explicit and spatially continuous neutral model to quantitatively predict six spatial and non-spatial patterns observed at the 50 ha tropical forest plot on Barro Colorado Island, Panama.