Community assembly: alternative stable states or alternative transient states?
Tadashi Fukami,Mifuyu Nakajima +1 more
TLDR
Using a simple model of plant community assembly, it is shown that the conditions under which historical contingency affects community assembly can differ greatly for stable versus transient states.Abstract:
The concept of alternative stable states has long been a dominant framework for studying the influence of historical contingency in community assembly. This concept focuses on stable states, yet many real communities are kept in a transient state by disturbance, and the utility of predictions for stable states in explaining transient states remains unclear. Using a simple model of plant community assembly, we show that the conditions under which historical contingency affects community assembly can differ greatly for stable versus transient states. Differences arise because the contribution of such factors as mortality rate, environmental heterogeneity and plant-soil feedback to historical contingency changes as community assembly proceeds. We also show that transient states can last for a long time relative to immigration rate and generation time. These results argue for a conceptual shift of focus from alternative stable states to alternative transient states for understanding historical contingency in community assembly.read more
Citations
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Patterns and Processes of Microbial Community Assembly
Diana R. Nemergut,Steven K. Schmidt,Tadashi Fukami,Sean P. O’Neill,Teresa M. Bilinski,Lee F. Stanish,Joseph E. Knelman,John L. Darcy,Ryan C. Lynch,Phillip Wickey,Scott Ferrenberg +10 more
TL;DR: This review paper highlights differences between microbes and macroorganisms and generate hypotheses describing how these differences may be important for community assembly, and discusses the implications of microbial assembly processes for ecosystem function and biodiversity.
Journal ArticleDOI
Historical Contingency in Community Assembly: Integrating Niches, Species Pools, and Priority Effects
TL;DR: The order and timing of species immigration during community assembly can affect species abundances at multiple spatial scales, and two requirements must be satisfied for historical contingency to occur: the regional pool contains species that can together cause priority effects, and local dynamics are rapid enough for early-arrived species to preempt or modify niches before other species arrive.
Journal ArticleDOI
Navigating the complexity of ecological stability
Ian Donohue,Helmut Hillebrand,José M. Montoya,Owen L. Petchey,Stuart L. Pimm,Mike S. Fowler,Kevin Healy,Andrew L. Jackson,Miguel Lurgi,Deirdre McClean,Nessa E. O'Connor,Eoin J. O'Gorman,Qiang Yang +12 more
TL;DR: This work assesses the scientific and policy literature and provides recommendations for theoreticians, empiricists and policymakers on how to better integrate the multidimensional nature of ecological stability into their research, policies and actions.
Journal ArticleDOI
β-Diversity, Community Assembly, and Ecosystem Functioning
TL;DR: It is highlighted here the crucial role of β-diversity - a hitherto underexplored facet of biodiversity - for a better process-level understanding of biodiversity change and its consequences for ecosystems.
Journal ArticleDOI
Living dangerously on borrowed time during slow, unrecognized regime shifts
Terry P. Hughes,Christina Linares,Vasilis Dakos,Vasilis Dakos,Ingrid A. van de Leemput,Egbert H. van Nes +5 more
TL;DR: This paper argues that slow responses by ecosystems after transgressing a dangerous threshold also affords borrowed time - a window of opportunity to return to safer conditions before the new state eventually locks in and equilibrates.
References
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vegan: Community Ecology Package
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