Do community-weighted mean functional traits reflect optimal strategies?

Do community-weighted mean functional traits reflect optimal strategies?

The notion that relationships between community-weighted mean (CWM) traits (i.e. plot-level trait values weighted by species abundances) and environmental conditions reflect selection towards locally optimal phenotypes is challenged by the large amount of interspecific trait variation typically found within ecological communities. Reconciling these contrasting patterns is a key to advancing pre...

Optimal Mean-Variance Selling Strategies

where t runs from 0 onwards, the supremum is taken over stopping times τ of X , and c > 0 is a given and fixed constant. Using direct martingale arguments we first show that when μ ≤ 0 it is optimal to stop at once and when μ ≥ σ/2 it is optimal not to stop at all. By employing the method of Lagrange multipliers we then show that the nonlinear problem for 0 < μ < σ/2 can be reduced to a family ...

Functional traits and community composition: multilevel models outperform community-weighted means

Community- Weighted Mean Plant Traits Predict Small Scale Distribution of Insect Root Herbivore Abundance

Small scale distribution of insect root herbivores may promote plant species diversity by creating patches of different herbivore pressure. However, determinants of small scale distribution of insect root herbivores, and impact of land use intensity on their small scale distribution are largely unknown. We sampled insect root herbivores and measured vegetation parameters and soil water content ...

Optimal strategies for weighted ray search

Searching for a hidden target is an important algorithmic paradigm with numerous applications. We introduce and study the general setting in which a number of targets, each with a certain weight, are hidden in a star-like environment that consists of m infinite, concurrent rays, with a common origin. A mobile searcher, initially located at the origin, explores this environment in order to locat...