A locally and regionally dynamic framework for community assembly

Activiteit: Academic presentationAcademic

Description

The idea of an external region providing a pool of species from which local communities are assembled(i.e. the ‘regional species pool’) is one of the conceptual and methodological cornerstones of community ecology. This simple framework, however, is increasingly challenged by the recognition that regional species assemblages are not fixed and immutable entities, but are instead dynamic, changing in composition and diversity through time as new species evolve, disperse and go extinct. Yet, most methods for studying local community assembly ignore these regional dynamics. How species pools are assembled and how these regional dynamics influence the structure of local communities therefore remains poorly understood. To address this, here we develop a new phylogenetic framework for simultaneously modelling the dynamic assembly of both the local community and the regional species pool. Using simulations we demonstrate how the regional dynamics of dispersal, extinction and speciation fundamentally shapes the structure of species assemblages across multiple spatial-scales,including patterns of species richness, phylogenetic and functional structure. We go on to show how these local and regional assembly dynamics can be inferred with high accuracy and reliability given only present day information on community structure and species phylogenetic branching times. With the opportunities provided by advances in phylogenetic data and modelling techniques we argue that is now time for community ecology to move beyond a static view of species pools to embrace the dynamic nature of regions in all their evolutionary and biogeographic glory.
Periode15-feb.-2017
EvenementstitelNetherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2017
EvenementstypeConference
Conferentienummer10
Organisator Netherlands Ecological Research Network (NERN)
LocatieLunteren, NetherlandsToon op kaart
Mate van erkenningInternational