Can constraint closure provide a generalized understanding of community dynamics in ecosystems?

Abstract

Since the inception of the discipline, understanding causal complexity in ecological communities has been a challenge. Here we draw insights from recent work on constraint closure that suggests ways of grappling with ecological complexity that yield generalizable theoretical insights. Using a set of evolutionary constraints on species flow through ecological communities, which include: selection, species drift, dispersal, and speciation, combined with multispecies interactions such as mutualistic interactions, and abiotic constraints, we demonstrate how constraint closure allows communities to emerge as semi-autonomous structures. Through agent-based modeling, we articulate ways that ecological pattern formation, viewed through the lens of constraint closure, informs questions about stability and turnover in community ecology. 12Currently, there does not seem to be a unified body of theory and practice that 13 explains most features of community structure. The hunt for generality has also been 14 fraught (See (Elliott-Graves Manuscript in Review) for a detailed overview). Theories in 15 the discipline often seem a piecemeal confederation of contingent ideas that carve nature 16 mid-bone, as it were, often focused on specific natural systems that provide only limited 17 empirical and theoretical support among other differently structured ecological 18 communities. It is clear that the theoretical constructions used by ecologists have been 19 crucially instrumental in the development of research programs and have allowed 20 progress in understanding community ecology. However, even basic concepts in the 21 discipline are often viewed differently by different research groups that are often divided 22March 10, 2020 1/20 into different camps, often to the point that there are even debates about the usefulness 23 of the concept of community ecology. For example, the following questions are still 24 being debated. Are they individuals [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]? Which ecological theories best describe the 25 dynamics of their structure, maintenance, and development [8,9,11,13,14]? Do they 26 have boundaries [5,15]? Are they stable [16]? How are communities assembled, and are 27 they so contingent that each community must be examined as an individual case 28 study [17][18][19][20][21][22][23]? Are ecosystems even real entities [24,25]? 29These questions are all interrelated, yet the abundant theories used to tame and 30 understand these ecological systems rarely provide a unified or coherent picture among 31 theories. Moreover, in order to make progress in the idea of an ecological community, it 32 seems essential to discover generalities that hold across the numerous possible biotic 33 configurations that comprise these individual community assemblages. It is also 34 important to view this project from multiple perspectives in order to tackle the inherent 35 complexity and provide a unified or coherent picture among theories for a more unified 36 conception of community ecology. There have been many attempts to...

Can constraint closure provide a generalized understanding of community dynamics in ecosystems?

“…Data available from the Dryad Digital Repository: <http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.59zw3r26w> (Peck and Heiss 2021).…”