Journal ArticleDOI
Opposing effects of competitive exclusion on the phylogenetic structure of communities
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TLDR
It is argued that two types of species differences determine competitive exclusion with opposing effects on relatedness patterns, which means that competition can sometimes eliminate more different and less related taxa, even when the traits underlying the relevant species differences are phylogenetically conserved.Abstract:
Though many processes are involved in determining which species coexist and assemble into communities, competition is among the best studied. One hypothesis about competition's contribution to community assembly is that more closely related species are less likely to coexist. Though empirical evidence for this hypothesis is mixed, it remains a common assumption in certain phylogenetic approaches for inferring the effects of environmental filtering and competitive exclusion. Here, we relate modern coexistence theory to phylogenetic community assembly approaches to refine expectations for how species relatedness influences the outcome of competition. We argue that two types of species differences determine competitive exclusion with opposing effects on relatedness patterns. Importantly, this means that competition can sometimes eliminate more different and less related taxa, even when the traits underlying the relevant species differences are phylogenetically conserved. Our argument leads to a reinterpretation of the assembly processes inferred from community phylogenetic structure.read more
Citations
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Niche conservatism as an emerging principle in ecology and conservation biology.
John J. Wiens,David D. Ackerly,Andrew P. Allen,Brian L. Anacker,Lauren B. Buckley,Howard V. Cornell,Ellen I. Damschen,T. Jonathan Davies,T. Jonathan Davies,John-Arvid Grytnes,Susan Harrison,Bradford A. Hawkins,Robert D. Holt,Christy M. McCain,Patrick R. Stephens +14 more
TL;DR: The mounting evidence for the importance of niche conservatism to major topics in ecology and conservation and other areas where it may be important but has generally been overlooked is described.
Journal ArticleDOI
The return of the variance: intraspecific variability in community ecology
Cyrille Violle,Cyrille Violle,Brian J. Enquist,Brian J. Enquist,Brian J. McGill,Lin Jiang,Cécile H. Albert,Cécile H. Albert,Catherine M. Hulshof,Vincent Jung,Julie Messier +10 more
TL;DR: New T-statistics ('T' for trait) are introduced, based on the comparison of intraspecific and interspecific variances of functional traits across organizational levels, to operationally incorporate intrapecific variability into community ecology theory.
Journal ArticleDOI
Community assembly, coexistence and the environmental filtering metaphor
Nathan J. B. Kraft,Peter B. Adler,Oscar Godoy,Emily C. James,Steve Fuller,Jonathan M. Levine +5 more
TL;DR: It is suggested that the evidence used in many studies to assess environmental filtering is insufficient to distinguish filtering from the outcome of biotic interactions, and a simple framework for considering the role of the environment in shaping community membership is presented.
Journal ArticleDOI
Stochastic Community Assembly: Does It Matter in Microbial Ecology?
TL;DR: Both stochastic and deterministic components embedded in various ecological processes, including selection, dispersal, diversification, and drift are described.
Journal ArticleDOI
Rethinking Community Assembly through the Lens of Coexistence Theory
Janneke HilleRisLambers,Peter B. Adler,W. S. Harpole,Jonathan M. Levine,Margaret M. Mayfield +4 more
TL;DR: It is shown that experimental manipulations of the abiotic or biotic environment, assessments of trait-phylogeny-environment relationships, and investigations of frequency-dependent population growth all suggest strong influences of stabilizing niche differences and fitness differences on the outcome of plant community assembly.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Mechanisms of Maintenance of Species Diversity
TL;DR: Stabilizing mechanisms are essential for species coexistence and include traditional mechanisms such as resource partitioning and frequency-dependent predation, as well as mechanisms that depend on fluctuations in population densities and environmental factors in space and time.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Limiting Similarity, Convergence, and Divergence of Coexisting Species
TL;DR: The total number of species is proportional to the total range of the environment divided by the niche breadth of the species, which is reduced by unequal abundance of resources but increased by adding to the dimensionality of the niche.
Journal ArticleDOI
Phylogenies and Community Ecology
TL;DR: A common pattern of phylogenetic conservatism in ecological character is recognized and the challenges of using phylogenies of partial lineages are highlighted and phylogenetic approaches to three emergent properties of communities: species diversity, relative abundance distributions, and range sizes are reviewed.
Book
The struggle for existence
TL;DR: For three-quarters of a century past more has been written about natural selection and the struggle for existence that underlies the selective process, than perhaps about any other single idea in the whole realm of Biology as discussed by the authors.