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Author: Jennifer Gail Howeth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biotic communities
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Insights gained from metapopulation and metacommunity biology indicate that the connectivity of subpopulations and communities by species dispersal can profoundly impact population dynamics, community structure, and ecosystem attributes. Recent advancements in metacommunity theory further suggest that the rate of species dispersal among local communities can be important in altering local and regional species richness and ecosystem functioning. The role of species dispersal rates relative to patch-type heterogeneity and associated intrinsic community structuring mechanisms (competition, predation) in affecting diversity of multi-trophic communities, however, remains unknown. Here, I address the relative influence of regional and local processes in altering species richness and ecosystem functioning at multiple spatial scales in freshwater pond metacommunities. In a series of experiments, I employed pond mesocosm metacommunities to manipulate planktonic species dispersal rates and the incidence of top predators which differed in prey selectivity. The consequences of dispersal and predation to zooplankton species richness, trophic structure, ecosystem stability, and prey traits were evaluated. Generally, my findings support predictions from metacommunity models, and demonstrate that dispersal strongly affects community and ecosystem-level properties. In accord with dispersal-diversity theory, dispersal rate affected species richness and ecosystem stability at multiple spatial scales. The presence, but not the rate, of dispersal had strong effects on the partitioning of biomass amongst producers, grazers, and top predators. The relative influence of predation on local and metacommunity structure varied across experiments and largely depended upon predator identity and the degree of feeding specialization. The research presented herein is some of the first work to evaluate how species dispersal rates can affect dispersal-diversity relationships, diversity-stability relationships, trophic structure, and the distribution of prey traits in metacommunities. In addition to advancing ecological theory, the results have important implications for conservation as fragmented landscapes become increasingly prevalent, and local and regional biotas modified. Ultimately, it proves critical to identify drivers of local and regional species richness in order to maintain biotic integrity at the global scale.
Author: Jennifer Gail Howeth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biotic communities
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Insights gained from metapopulation and metacommunity biology indicate that the connectivity of subpopulations and communities by species dispersal can profoundly impact population dynamics, community structure, and ecosystem attributes. Recent advancements in metacommunity theory further suggest that the rate of species dispersal among local communities can be important in altering local and regional species richness and ecosystem functioning. The role of species dispersal rates relative to patch-type heterogeneity and associated intrinsic community structuring mechanisms (competition, predation) in affecting diversity of multi-trophic communities, however, remains unknown. Here, I address the relative influence of regional and local processes in altering species richness and ecosystem functioning at multiple spatial scales in freshwater pond metacommunities. In a series of experiments, I employed pond mesocosm metacommunities to manipulate planktonic species dispersal rates and the incidence of top predators which differed in prey selectivity. The consequences of dispersal and predation to zooplankton species richness, trophic structure, ecosystem stability, and prey traits were evaluated. Generally, my findings support predictions from metacommunity models, and demonstrate that dispersal strongly affects community and ecosystem-level properties. In accord with dispersal-diversity theory, dispersal rate affected species richness and ecosystem stability at multiple spatial scales. The presence, but not the rate, of dispersal had strong effects on the partitioning of biomass amongst producers, grazers, and top predators. The relative influence of predation on local and metacommunity structure varied across experiments and largely depended upon predator identity and the degree of feeding specialization. The research presented herein is some of the first work to evaluate how species dispersal rates can affect dispersal-diversity relationships, diversity-stability relationships, trophic structure, and the distribution of prey traits in metacommunities. In addition to advancing ecological theory, the results have important implications for conservation as fragmented landscapes become increasingly prevalent, and local and regional biotas modified. Ultimately, it proves critical to identify drivers of local and regional species richness in order to maintain biotic integrity at the global scale.
Author: Mathew A. Leibold
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691049165
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Metacommunity ecology links smaller-scale processes that have been the provenance of population and community ecology—such as birth-death processes, species interactions, selection, and stochasticity—with larger-scale issues such as dispersal and habitat heterogeneity. Until now, the field has focused on evaluating the relative importance of distinct processes, with niche-based environmental sorting on one side and neutral-based ecological drift and dispersal limitation on the other. This book moves beyond these artificial categorizations, showing how environmental sorting, dispersal, ecological drift, and other processes influence metacommunity structure simultaneously. Mathew Leibold and Jonathan Chase argue that the relative importance of these processes depends on the characteristics of the organisms, the strengths and types of their interactions, the degree of habitat heterogeneity, the rates of dispersal, and the scale at which the system is observed. Using this synthetic perspective, they explore metacommunity patterns in time and space, including patterns of coexistence, distribution, and diversity. Leibold and Chase demonstrate how these processes and patterns are altered by micro- and macroevolution, traits and phylogenetic relationships, and food web interactions. They then use this scale-explicit perspective to illustrate how metacommunity processes are essential for understanding macroecological and biogeographical patterns as well as ecosystem-level processes. Moving seamlessly across scales and subdisciplines, Metacommunity Ecology is an invaluable reference, one that offers a more integrated approach to ecological patterns and processes.
Author: Patrick Thompson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
"Landscape fragmentation limits the ability of species to disperse between habitats and shift their distributions in response to changing environmental conditions. Because of habitat fragmentation, many species will be unable to keep pace with climate change, and this is expected to greatly impact the diversity, functioning, and stability of future ecosystems. Conserving habitat connectivity is expected to mitigate some of these impacts. But there are also concerns that the complexity of ecological responses will compromise our ability to predict future community structure and functioning. The spatial insurance hypothesis extends connectivity science to show how dispersal between local habitats maintains biodiversity and ecosystem functioning when environmental conditions are changing. However, complex issues remain, such as whether dispersal can simultaneously provide stability for the full range of ecosystem functions produced by a community, and how regional climate warming will impact the strength of spatial insurance provided by biological diversity.In this thesis, I extend research on the spatial insurance hypothesis with a combination of field surveys, experimentation, and theoretical simulations. I first conducted a field survey to determine how the composition and function of pond zooplankton communities was structured by the local environmental conditions of ponds on Mont St. Hilaire, QC. I found that measures of zooplankton functional and phylogenetic diversity outperformed species richness in explaining variation in two types of zooplankton ecosystem functions. Furthermore, the composition of these communities was determined by the local environmental conditions in the ponds, suggesting that dispersal could potentially provide spatial insurance if these conditions were to change. I then tested this experimentally, asking whether dispersal could preserve diversity and provide stability to metacommunities under ambient and warmed conditions. I found that dispersal preserved biodiversity and stabilized metacommunity biomass in ambient conditions, but that this benefit was lost with warming. This suggests that the stabilizing effects of dispersal may be eroded by directional environmental change, such as climate warming. I then returned to the spatial insurance model, extending the theory by incorporating multiple ecosystem functions. I showed that changing the rate at which species disperse dramatically alters the number, identity, and stability of functions that are produced both locally and regionally. Intermediate dispersal rates result in the greatest simultaneous production of functions across spatial scales and stabilize the temporal production of each function at the regional scale. However, this results in great local variability of each function, which differs from the stabilizing effect previously reported when only one function is considered. Finally, I used a theoretical simulation to test how biotic interactions and the rate of species dispersal interact to affect the predictability of multispecies range shifts under directional climate change. I showed how biotic interactions result in differences in the ability of species to track changes in climate, resulting in novel and unpredictable community compositions. Yet, when dispersal rates are not limiting, these differences are minimized and species track changes in climate at the same speed as their neighbours, leading to predictable range shifts.As a whole, my thesis tests and extends the spatial insurance hypothesis, demonstrating the conditions under which dispersal maintains the composition, functioning, stability, and predictability of ecological communities. These findings give support to the strategy of managing landscapes to maintain connectivity as a way to mitigate the joint impacts of habitat fragmentation and climate change." --
Author: Charles Olinger
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 77
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Book Description
Metacommunity ecology focuses on the influence of regional and local processes structuring sets of communities, and theory predicts that the relative importance of those processes will change over time since initiation of community assembly. Determining the effects of regional and local processes on species and trait diversity over succession in metacommunities remains largely unaddressed to date, yet could confer an improved mechanistic understanding of community assembly. To test theoretical predictions of the increasing importance of local processes over succession in metacommunities, we evaluated fish species and functional trait diversity and dispersion in three pond metacommunities undergoing succession from beaver (Castor canadensis) disturbance. Additionally, processes influencing taxonomic and functional diversity in pond communities were contrasted with reference stream communities. The beaver modified habitats exhibited different environmental conditions by successional stage. Pond area and maximum water depth significantly increased with the number of years since pond formation. Further, ponds were deeper and warmer than streams. Species and functional richness was greater, and beta diversity was lower, in ponds than in streams. Diversity measures among pond age classes differed less than between ponds and streams, but indicated a decline in species and functional diversity and reduced community turnover later in succession. There was no influence of habitat type on functional dispersion. The analyses of the relative importance of regional and local processes over succession suggest that habitat age and dispersal were more important than local processes in structuring fish assemblages in pond metacommunities. The relative contributions were metacommunity and temporal scale-dependent as habitat age effects were only dominant in the longest chronosequence represented in the region. Counter to predictions, local environmental processes became less important in structuring pond communities over later successional stages but did exert a stronger effect on trait sorting in older ponds. In contrast to the temporal and spatial effects operating in the successional pond metacommunity mosaics, local processes primarily structured species and trait diversity in the streams. Together, the results of this study highlight that community and, subsequently, metacommunity structure can be shaped by succession mediated shifts among regional and local structuring processes in landscapes experiencing locally heterogeneous disturbance.
Author: Pedro Giovâni Da Silva
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889667804
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 143
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Book Description
Author: Marcel Holyoak
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226350649
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 527
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Book Description
Takes the hallmarks of metapopulation theory to the next level by considering a group of communities, each of which may contain numerous populations, connected by species interactions within communities and the movement of individuals between communities. This book seeks to understand how communities work in fragmented landscapes.
Author:
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128039337
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
Advances in Ecological Research is one of the most successful series in the highly competitive field of ecology. Each volume publishes topical and important reviews, interpreting ecology as widely as in the past, to include all material that contributes to our understanding of the field. Topics in this invaluable series include the physiology, populations, and communities of plants and animals, as well as landscape and ecosystem ecology. Presents the most updated information on the field of ecology, publishing topical and important reviews Provides all information that relates to a thorough understanding of the field Includes data on physiology, populations, and communities of plants and animals New ideas on ES Integrative approach working across a variety of levels of biological organization and spatial and temporal scales Diversity of relevant subjects covered
Author: Martin Solan
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191637394
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
The biological composition and richness of most of the Earth's major ecosystems are being dramatically and irreversibly transformed by anthropogenic activity. Yet, despite the vast areal extent of our oceans, the mainstay of research to-date in the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning arena has been weighted towards ecological observations and experimentation in terrestrial plant and soil systems. This book provides a framework for extending these concepts to a variety of marine systems. Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning is the first book to address the latest advances in biodiversity-function science using marine examples. It brings together contributions from the leading scientists in the field to provide an in-depth evaluation of the science, before offering a perspective on future research directions for some of the most pressing environmental issues facing society today and in the future.
Author: Ilkka Hanski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
Author: Harold A. Mooney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Incorporates the results of the program on ecosystem experiments conducted by the Scientific Committee of Problems of the Environment. Features research papers submitted at Mitwitz, Germany and Washington, D.C. The objective of this compilation of papers is to explore the potential of ecosystem experimentation as a tool for understanding and predicting changes in the biosphere. Areas investigated include deforestation, desertification, El Nino phenomenon, acid rain, watersheds, wetlands, aquatic and climatic changes.
