Disturbance by large herbivores alters the relative importance of the ecological processes that influence the assembly pattern in heterogeneous meta-communities

Aboveground and belowground arthropods experience different relative influences of stochastic versus deterministic community assembly processes following disturbance

BACKGROUND Understanding patterns of biodiversity is a longstanding challenge in ecology. Similar to other biotic groups, arthropod community structure can be shaped by deterministic and stochastic processes, with limited understanding of what moderates the relative influence of these processes. Disturbances have been noted to alter the relative influence of deterministic and stochastic process...

Disturbance alters arthropod community assembly 1 Aboveground and belowground arthropod communities experience different relative influences of stochastic and deterministic assembly processes following disturbance

Ecological Drivers of Ecosystem Diversity in Sahelian Rangeland of Niger

Description of vegetation patterns associated with environmental factors such as grazing, climate, landforms, substrate variables etc. are helpful for land management planning. This study used new synecological tools to investigate plants composition and to provide ecological descriptions of plants communities of communal pastures in Sahelian Ecological Zone of Niger. Vegetation and several env...

Fire Severity Filters Regeneration Traits to Shape Community Assembly in Alaska’s Boreal Forest

Disturbance can both initiate and shape patterns of secondary succession by affecting processes of community assembly. Thus, understanding assembly rules is a key element of predicting ecological responses to changing disturbance regimes. We measured the composition and trait characteristics of plant communities early after widespread wildfires in Alaska to assess how variations in disturbance ...

Trait evolution, community assembly, and the phylogenetic structure of ecological communities.

Taxa co-occurring in communities often represent a nonrandom sample, in phenotypic or phylogenetic terms, of the regional species pool. While heuristic arguments have identified processes that create community phylogenetic patterns, further progress hinges on a more comprehensive understanding of the interactions between underlying ecological and evolutionary processes. We created a simulation ...