Towards the general mechanistic prediction of community dynamics

Abstract

“What controls the distribution and abundance of organisms”? This question, at the heart of the dynamics of ecological communities, would have been familiar to the earliest ecologists. Having lain effectively abandoned for many years, community dynamics today is a vibrant research topic of great conceptual interest with practical import for conservation, ecological management, ecosystem services and the responses of ecological communities to climate change. We describe how modern coexistence theory can be used to predict community dynamics through the use of demography. We explore the challenges that limit the deployment of this demographic framework, and the tools from phylogenetic and functional ecology that have been used to surmount them. Finding existing tools not altogether sufficient, we propose the use of “hard” functional traits and physiological tolerances of environmental conditions and low resource availability to extend the demographic framework so that the dynamics of a broader range of ecological communities can be accurately predicted. We illustrate these new approaches with two case studies. Given the urgent need to accurately forecast the dynamics of ecological communities, we hope that many ecologists will adopt these tools. A http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13096/suppinfo is available for this article.

Leaf drought tolerance cannot be inferred from classic leaf traits in a tropical rainforest

“…Other hydraulic traits than π tlp are however difficult or long to measure in the field, or prone to artefact measurements in tropical plants (Cochard et al, ), and thus remain under‐documented in tropical forest communities (Bartlett, Zhang, et al, ; Choat et al, ). Together with our results, this calls for more direct measurements of π tlp and other physiological traits, especially in tropical forests (Blackman, ; Brodribb, ; Griffin‐Nolan et al, ; Paine, Deasey, & Duthie, ; Yang, Cao, & Swenson, ).…”

Dry‐season decline in tree sapflux is correlated with leaf turgor loss point in a tropical rainforest

“…Soil water availability is an important climatic driver of tree growth variability, even in rainforest ecosystems (Wagner, Rossi, Stahl, Bonal, & Hérault, 2012), but species responses have been poorly predicted by commonly measured traits (Wagner et al, 2014). This suggests that further trait-based exploration of the determinants of tree growth variability should include physiological traits such as π tlp (Paine et al, 2018). As growth is turgor-mediated (Muller et al, 2011), this new perspective could help shift models from carbon source-driven to sink-driven plant modelling approaches (Fatichi, Leuzinger, & Körner, 2014).…”

“…In addition, this categorization has mainly been applied to ecosystems composed of few codominant species with contrasting strategies (e.g., piñon–juniper woodland; McDowell et al, ), but diverse communities shelter a continuum of responses to drying conditions (Klein, ) involving variation in mechanisms in addition to stomatal closure such as xylem resistance to cavitation, deep rooting, deciduousness or stem capacitance (Pivovaroff et al, ). The high taxonomic and functional diversity and the typical absence of species dominance in tropical forest communities call for a trait‐based approach (Paine, Deasey, & Duthie, ). However, the quest for relevant and reliably measurable functional traits that quantify plant performance under drying conditions still remains a major challenge of trait‐based plant functional ecology (Sack et al, ; Shipley et al, ).…”

Towards a mechanistic understanding of global change ecology

“…Changes in species distributions, either through natural range expansions or introductions to new areas (species invasions), influence the composition of communities, interactions among species and patterns of biodiversity. We lead off our reviews exploring the community‐level biodiversity consequences of global change with a paper by Paine, Deasey, and Duthie () that discusses techniques for predicting changes in community dynamics over time frames during which anthropogenic changes likely influence most communities. Paine et al.…”

“…Paine et al. () review how modern coexistence theory based on the estimation of demographic parameters can be used to predict community dynamics. They suggest that considering “hard” functional traits (those most predictive of vital rates) and physiological tolerances can improve predictions of community dynamics in a wide variety of ecosystems.…”