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Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology

A central goal in ecology is to understand what maintains species diversity in local communities. Classic ecological theory(1,2) posits that niches dictate the maximum number of species that can coexist in a community and that the richness of observed species will be below this maximum only where im...

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Autores principales: Loke, Lynette H. L., Chisholm, Ryan A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10266978/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37286612
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06161-x
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author Loke, Lynette H. L.
Chisholm, Ryan A.
author_facet Loke, Lynette H. L.
Chisholm, Ryan A.
author_sort Loke, Lynette H. L.
collection PubMed
description A central goal in ecology is to understand what maintains species diversity in local communities. Classic ecological theory(1,2) posits that niches dictate the maximum number of species that can coexist in a community and that the richness of observed species will be below this maximum only where immigration is very low. A new alternative theory(3,4) is that niches, instead, dictate the minimum number of coexisting species and that the richness of observed species will usually be well above this because of ongoing immigration. We conducted an experimental test to discriminate between these two unified theories using a manipulative field experiment with tropical intertidal communities. We found, consistent with the new theory, that the relationship of species richness to immigration rate stabilized at a low value at low immigration rates and did not saturate at high immigration rates. Our results suggest that tropical intertidal communities have low niche diversity and are typically in a dispersal-assembled regime where immigration is high enough to overfill the niches. Observational data from other studies(3,5) suggest that these conclusions may generalize to other ecological systems. Our new experimental approach can be adapted for other systems and be used as a ‘niche detector’ and a tool for assessing when communities are niche versus dispersal assembled.
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spelling pubmed-102669782023-06-15 Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology Loke, Lynette H. L. Chisholm, Ryan A. Nature Article A central goal in ecology is to understand what maintains species diversity in local communities. Classic ecological theory(1,2) posits that niches dictate the maximum number of species that can coexist in a community and that the richness of observed species will be below this maximum only where immigration is very low. A new alternative theory(3,4) is that niches, instead, dictate the minimum number of coexisting species and that the richness of observed species will usually be well above this because of ongoing immigration. We conducted an experimental test to discriminate between these two unified theories using a manipulative field experiment with tropical intertidal communities. We found, consistent with the new theory, that the relationship of species richness to immigration rate stabilized at a low value at low immigration rates and did not saturate at high immigration rates. Our results suggest that tropical intertidal communities have low niche diversity and are typically in a dispersal-assembled regime where immigration is high enough to overfill the niches. Observational data from other studies(3,5) suggest that these conclusions may generalize to other ecological systems. Our new experimental approach can be adapted for other systems and be used as a ‘niche detector’ and a tool for assessing when communities are niche versus dispersal assembled. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-06-07 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10266978/ /pubmed/37286612 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06161-x Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Loke, Lynette H. L.
Chisholm, Ryan A.
Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology
title Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology
title_full Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology
title_fullStr Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology
title_full_unstemmed Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology
title_short Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology
title_sort unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10266978/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37286612
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06161-x
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