2024/01/11 by Gabriel Khattar, Pedro R. Peres-Neto, Pedro R. Peres‐Neto · 8 citations
Environmental Science · #Biology #Computer science #Demography #Download #Ecology #Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies #Geographic variation #Geography #Sociology #Species Distribution and Climate Change #Variation (astronomy) #Wildlife Ecology and Conservation #World Wide Web
paper · doi:10.1086/729423
published in The American Naturalist 203(5), E142-E156 (University of Chicago Press)
openalex publication_date 2024/01/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
AbstractThe nonrandom association between landscape characteristics and the dominant life history strategies observed in species pools is a typical pattern in nature. Here, we argue that these associations determine predictable changes in the relative importance of assembly mechanisms along broadscale geographic gradients (i.e., the geographic context of metacommunity dynamics). To demonstrate that, we employed simulation models in which groups of species with the same initial distribution of niche breadths and dispersal abilities interacted across a wide range of landscapes with contrasting characteristics. By assessing the traits of dominant species in the species pool in each landscape type, we determined how different landscape characteristics select for different life history strategies at the metacommunity level. We analyzed the simulated data using the same analytical approaches used in the study of empirical metacommunities to derive predictions about the causal relationships between landscape characteristics and dominant life histories in species pools, as well as their reciprocal influence on empirical inferences regarding the assembly process. We provide empirical support for these predictions by contrasting the assembly of moth metacommunities in a tropical versus a temperate mountainous landscape. Together, our model framework and empirical analyses demonstrate how the geographic context of metacommunities influences our understanding of community assembly across broadscale ecological gradients.