2009
DOI: 10.1890/08-0851.1
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Contrasts between habitat generalists and specialists: an empirical extension to the basic metacommunity framework

Abstract: Emergence of the metacommunity concept has made a substantial contribution to better understanding of the community composition and dynamics in a regional context. However, long-term field data for testing of available metacommunity models are still scarce, and the extent to which these models apply to the real world remains unknown. Tests conducted so far have largely sought to fit data on the entire regional set of species to one of several metacommunity models, implicitly assuming that all species operate s… Show more

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Cited by 541 publications
(535 citation statements)
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“…The generalists network was less connected and more compartmentalized (19 significant co-occurrences and five compartments) than the specialists network (29 significant co-occurrences and two compartments) probably because of the highest habitat variability covered by the former and the presence in restricted environments by the latter. Thus, the two somehow arbitrary ecological categories that we established allowed us to capture additional information on the community assembling structure as previously shown for macroorganisms (Pandit et al, 2009).…”
Section: Habitat Generalists and Specialistsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The generalists network was less connected and more compartmentalized (19 significant co-occurrences and five compartments) than the specialists network (29 significant co-occurrences and two compartments) probably because of the highest habitat variability covered by the former and the presence in restricted environments by the latter. Thus, the two somehow arbitrary ecological categories that we established allowed us to capture additional information on the community assembling structure as previously shown for macroorganisms (Pandit et al, 2009).…”
Section: Habitat Generalists and Specialistsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Thus, even though we found species sorting processes, they were relatively weak and established themselves via differences in relative abundances of generalist taxa among the different media, as well as media-specific occurrences of a few specific taxa. It has been shown earlier that species sorting has strong effects on specialists, whereas regional forces (patch or neutral dynamics) are stronger for generalists (Pandit et al, 2009). Hence, the lack of strong species sorting effects could be because of the fact that specialists are disfavoured during the growth in initially empty patches, which selected fast growing, opportunistic species.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 98%
“…The existence of specialists-organisms that are more fit in some environments than in others (box 1)-influences taxonomic diversity [3], geographical variability [4] and complex community dynamics [5]. Developing a better understanding of why specialists evolve and persist will therefore result in a better understanding of what gives rise to the tremendous variability that exists in nature.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%