Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest
Assessing the relative importance of different processes that determine the spatial distribution of species and the dynamics in highly diverse plant communities remains a challenging question in ecology. Previous modelling approaches often focused on single aggregated forest diversity patterns that...
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| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
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The Royal Society
2015
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4344136/ |
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pubmed-4344136 |
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pubmed-43441362015-03-11 Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest May, Felix Huth, Andreas Wiegand, Thorsten Research Articles Assessing the relative importance of different processes that determine the spatial distribution of species and the dynamics in highly diverse plant communities remains a challenging question in ecology. Previous modelling approaches often focused on single aggregated forest diversity patterns that convey limited information on the underlying dynamic processes. Here, we use recent advances in inference for stochastic simulation models to evaluate the ability of a spatially explicit and spatially continuous neutral model to quantitatively predict six spatial and non-spatial patterns observed at the 50 ha tropical forest plot on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. The patterns capture different aspects of forest dynamics and biodiversity structure, such as annual mortality rate, species richness, species abundance distribution, beta-diversity and the species–area relationship (SAR). The model correctly predicted each pattern independently and up to five patterns simultaneously. However, the model was unable to match the SAR and beta-diversity simultaneously. Our study moves previous theory towards a dynamic spatial theory of biodiversity and demonstrates the value of spatial data to identify ecological processes. This opens up new avenues to evaluate the consequences of additional process for community assembly and dynamics. The Royal Society 2015-03-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4344136/ /pubmed/25631991 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.1657 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2015 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
May, Felix Huth, Andreas Wiegand, Thorsten |
| spellingShingle |
May, Felix Huth, Andreas Wiegand, Thorsten Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest |
| author_facet |
May, Felix Huth, Andreas Wiegand, Thorsten |
| author_sort |
May, Felix |
| title |
Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest |
| title_short |
Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest |
| title_full |
Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest |
| title_fullStr |
Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest |
| title_sort |
moving beyond abundance distributions: neutral theory and spatial patterns in a tropical forest |
| description |
Assessing the relative importance of different processes that determine the spatial distribution of species and the dynamics in highly diverse plant communities remains a challenging question in ecology. Previous modelling approaches often focused on single aggregated forest diversity patterns that convey limited information on the underlying dynamic processes. Here, we use recent advances in inference for stochastic simulation models to evaluate the ability of a spatially explicit and spatially continuous neutral model to quantitatively predict six spatial and non-spatial patterns observed at the 50 ha tropical forest plot on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. The patterns capture different aspects of forest dynamics and biodiversity structure, such as annual mortality rate, species richness, species abundance distribution, beta-diversity and the species–area relationship (SAR). The model correctly predicted each pattern independently and up to five patterns simultaneously. However, the model was unable to match the SAR and beta-diversity simultaneously. Our study moves previous theory towards a dynamic spatial theory of biodiversity and demonstrates the value of spatial data to identify ecological processes. This opens up new avenues to evaluate the consequences of additional process for community assembly and dynamics. |
| publisher |
The Royal Society |
| publishDate |
2015 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4344136/ |
| _version_ |
1613193394803179520 |