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Trait adaptation promotes species coexistence in diverse predator and prey communities

Species can adjust their traits in response to selection which may strongly influence species coexistence. Nevertheless, current theory mainly assumes distinct and time‐invariant trait values. We examined the combined effects of the range and the speed of trait adaptation on species coexistence usin...

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Autores principales: Klauschies, Toni, Vasseur, David A., Gaedke, Ursula
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4972238/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27516870
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2172
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author Klauschies, Toni
Vasseur, David A.
Gaedke, Ursula
author_facet Klauschies, Toni
Vasseur, David A.
Gaedke, Ursula
author_sort Klauschies, Toni
collection PubMed
description Species can adjust their traits in response to selection which may strongly influence species coexistence. Nevertheless, current theory mainly assumes distinct and time‐invariant trait values. We examined the combined effects of the range and the speed of trait adaptation on species coexistence using an innovative multispecies predator–prey model. It allows for temporal trait changes of all predator and prey species and thus simultaneous coadaptation within and among trophic levels. We show that very small or slow trait adaptation did not facilitate coexistence because the stabilizing niche differences were not sufficient to offset the fitness differences. In contrast, sufficiently large and fast trait adaptation jointly promoted stable or neutrally stable species coexistence. Continuous trait adjustments in response to selection enabled a temporally variable convergence and divergence of species traits; that is, species became temporally more similar (neutral theory) or dissimilar (niche theory) depending on the selection pressure, resulting over time in a balance between niche differences stabilizing coexistence and fitness differences promoting competitive exclusion. Furthermore, coadaptation allowed prey and predator species to cluster into different functional groups. This equalized the fitness of similar species while maintaining sufficient niche differences among functionally different species delaying or preventing competitive exclusion. In contrast to previous studies, the emergent feedback between biomass and trait dynamics enabled supersaturated coexistence for a broad range of potential trait adaptation and parameters. We conclude that accounting for trait adaptation may explain stable and supersaturated species coexistence for a broad range of environmental conditions in natural systems when the absence of such adaptive changes would preclude it. Small trait changes, coincident with those that may occur within many natural populations, greatly enlarged the number of coexisting species.
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spelling pubmed-49722382016-08-11 Trait adaptation promotes species coexistence in diverse predator and prey communities Klauschies, Toni Vasseur, David A. Gaedke, Ursula Ecol Evol Original Research Species can adjust their traits in response to selection which may strongly influence species coexistence. Nevertheless, current theory mainly assumes distinct and time‐invariant trait values. We examined the combined effects of the range and the speed of trait adaptation on species coexistence using an innovative multispecies predator–prey model. It allows for temporal trait changes of all predator and prey species and thus simultaneous coadaptation within and among trophic levels. We show that very small or slow trait adaptation did not facilitate coexistence because the stabilizing niche differences were not sufficient to offset the fitness differences. In contrast, sufficiently large and fast trait adaptation jointly promoted stable or neutrally stable species coexistence. Continuous trait adjustments in response to selection enabled a temporally variable convergence and divergence of species traits; that is, species became temporally more similar (neutral theory) or dissimilar (niche theory) depending on the selection pressure, resulting over time in a balance between niche differences stabilizing coexistence and fitness differences promoting competitive exclusion. Furthermore, coadaptation allowed prey and predator species to cluster into different functional groups. This equalized the fitness of similar species while maintaining sufficient niche differences among functionally different species delaying or preventing competitive exclusion. In contrast to previous studies, the emergent feedback between biomass and trait dynamics enabled supersaturated coexistence for a broad range of potential trait adaptation and parameters. We conclude that accounting for trait adaptation may explain stable and supersaturated species coexistence for a broad range of environmental conditions in natural systems when the absence of such adaptive changes would preclude it. Small trait changes, coincident with those that may occur within many natural populations, greatly enlarged the number of coexisting species. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016-05-23 /pmc/articles/PMC4972238/ /pubmed/27516870 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2172 Text en © 2016 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Klauschies, Toni
Vasseur, David A.
Gaedke, Ursula
Trait adaptation promotes species coexistence in diverse predator and prey communities
title Trait adaptation promotes species coexistence in diverse predator and prey communities
title_full Trait adaptation promotes species coexistence in diverse predator and prey communities
title_fullStr Trait adaptation promotes species coexistence in diverse predator and prey communities
title_full_unstemmed Trait adaptation promotes species coexistence in diverse predator and prey communities
title_short Trait adaptation promotes species coexistence in diverse predator and prey communities
title_sort trait adaptation promotes species coexistence in diverse predator and prey communities
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4972238/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27516870
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2172
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