Disentangling the importance of ecological niches from stochastic processes across scales

Chase, Jonathan M.; Myers, Jonathan A.

doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0063

Cited by 1,326 publications

(1,270 citation statements)

References 138 publications

(255 reference statements)

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“…Evenness tended to be lower at intermediate dispersals, suggesting that more competitive colonizers were able to dominate at these levels, but mass effects increased both richness and evenness at high dispersal rates. In addition, increases in α-diversity likely contributed to decreases in β-diversity (Chase and Myers, 2011). When comparing across metacommunities that may differ in size or source pool, removing this effect can be important (for example, through statistical methods such as Raup-Crick distance; .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, including these many taxa was not feasible in our model. We adjusted the size of the regional pool to 1102 taxa, and the size of local communities to 100 taxa, so that we achieved a similar ratio of local to regional richness (100:1102 compared with 211:2199 in the field study) as this ratio can influence withinand between-group distance through sampling effects (Chase and Myers, 2011).…”

Section: Dispersalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of dispersal and selection on stochastic assembly in microbial communities

2016

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Stochastic processes can play an important role in microbial community assembly. Dispersal limitation is one process that can increase stochasticity and obscure relationships between environmental variables and microbial community composition, but the relationship between dispersal, selection and stochasticity has not been described in a comprehensive way. We examine how dispersal and its interactions with drift and selection alter the consistency with which microbial communities assemble using a realistic, individual-based model of microbial decomposers. Communities were assembled under different environmental conditions and dispersal rates in repeated simulations, and we examined the compositional difference among replicate communities colonizing the same type of leaf litter ('within-group distance'), as well as between-group deterministic selection. Dispersal rates below 25% turnover per year resulted in high within-group distance among communities and no significant environmental effects. As dispersal limitation was alleviated, both within-and between-group distance decreased, but despite this homogenization, deterministic environmental effects remained significant. In addition to direct effects of dispersal rate, stochasticity of community composition was influenced by an interaction between dispersal and selection strength. Specifically, communities experiencing stronger selection (less favorable litter chemistries) were more stochastic, possibly because lower biomass and richness intensified drift or priority effects. Overall, we show that dispersal rate can significantly alter patterns of community composition. Partitioning the effects of dispersal, selection and drift based on static patterns of microbial composition will be difficult, if not impossible. Experiments will be required to tease apart these complex interactions between assembly processes shaping microbial communities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Dispersalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of dispersal and selection on stochastic assembly in microbial communities

2016

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“…Aggregate community patterns (such as species abundance distributions) have been extensively used to describe natural communities and to investigate the processes that generate them [19,20]. Empirical data are not readily available for succession dynamics [5], and well-replicated empirical community assembly data [3,13] are also scarce.…”

Section: (B) From Process To Patternmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the continuum: a multi-dimensional phase space for neutral–niche community assembly

2015

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Neutral and niche processes are generally considered to interact in natural communities along a continuum, exhibiting community patterns bounded by pure neutral and pure niche processes. The continuum concept uses niche separation, an attribute of the community, to test the hypothesis that communities are bounded by pure niche or pure neutral conditions. It does not accommodate interactions via feedback between processes and the environment. By contrast, we introduce the Community Assembly Phase Space (CAPS), a multidimensional space that uses community processes (such as dispersal and niche selection) to define the limiting neutral and niche conditions and to test the continuum hypothesis. We compare the outputs of modelled communities in a heterogeneous landscape, assembled by pure neutral, pure niche and composite processes. Differences in patterns under different combinations of processes in CAPS reveal hidden complexity in neutral-niche community dynamics. The neutral-niche continuum only holds for strong dispersal limitation and niche separation. For weaker dispersal limitation and niche separation, neutral and niche processes amplify each other via feedback with the environment. This generates patterns that lie well beyond those predicted by a continuum. Inferences drawn from patterns about community assembly processes can therefore be misguided when based on the continuum perspective. CAPS also demonstrates the complementary information value of different patterns for inferring community processes and captures the complexity of community assembly. It provides a general tool for studying the processes structuring communities and can be applied to address a range of questions in community and metacommunity ecology.

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“…The result can be the increasing dominance of a handful of tolerant species as conditions deteriorate (Chase, 2007; Kneitel & Chase, 2004; Passy, 2016). In contrast, communities found in more favorable environments are more likely to have species compositions that reflect stochastic processes in colonization history (Chase & Myers, 2011) and more evenly distributed abundances among species (Passy, 2016). This would only have occurred in our experiment if the conditions on habitat islands deteriorated disproportionately among treatments, and specifically on all islands other than those that were large and near the adjacent forest.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, classical island biogeography and modern neutral theory (in the context of immigration) assumes all taxa are ecologically equivalent, and the composition of communities depends primarily on chance (Chase & Myers, 2011). Larger islands should therefore have consistently higher species richness than smaller islands, and near islands should have higher species richness than distant islands.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manipulation of habitat isolation and area implicates deterministic factors and limited neutrality in community assembly

Ord

Emblen

Hagman

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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Theory predicts deterministic and stochastic factors will contribute to community assembly in different ways: Environmental filters should regulate those species that establish in a particular area resulting in the ecological requirements of species being the primary driver of species distributions, while chance and dispersal limitation should dictate the likelihood of species reaching certain areas with the ecology of species being largely neutral. These factors are specifically relevant for understanding how the area and isolation of different habitats or islands interact to affect community composition. Our review of the literature found few experimental studies have examined the interactive effect of habitat area and isolation on community assembly, and the results of those experiments have been mixed. We manipulated the area and isolation of rock “islands” created de novo in a grassland matrix to experimentally test how deterministic and stochastic factors shape colonizing animal communities. Over 64 weeks, the experiment revealed the primacy of deterministic factors in community assembly, with habitat islands of the same size exhibiting remarkable consistency in community composition and diversity, irrespective of isolation. Nevertheless, tangible differences still existed in abundance inequality among taxa: Large, near islands had consistently higher numbers of common taxa compared to all other island types. Dispersal limitation is often assumed to be negligible at small spatial scales, but our data shows this not to be the case. Furthermore, the dispersal limitation of a subset of species has potentially complex flow‐on effects for dictating the type of deterministic factors affecting other colonizing species.

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Disentangling the importance of ecological niches from stochastic processes across scales

Cited by 1,326 publications

References 138 publications

Effects of dispersal and selection on stochastic assembly in microbial communities

Effects of dispersal and selection on stochastic assembly in microbial communities

Beyond the continuum: a multi-dimensional phase space for neutral–niche community assembly

Manipulation of habitat isolation and area implicates deterministic factors and limited neutrality in community assembly

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