Challenges in linking trait patterns to niche differentiation

Oikos

Volumn 125, Issue 10, 2016, Pages 1369-1385

  D'Andrea, Rafael ^a   Ostling, Annette ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN   (Denmark)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COEXISTENCE; ECOLOGICAL MODELING; EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; EVOLUTION; IMMIGRATION; INTRASPECIFIC VARIATION; NICHE;

EID: 84973515324     PISSN: 00301299     EISSN: 16000706     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/oik.02979     Document Type: Article

References (136)

1. Abrams, P. 1975. Limiting similarity and the form of the competition coefficient. – Theor. Popul. Biol. 8: 356–375.
2. Abrams, P. 1983. The theory of limiting similarity. – Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 14: 359–376.
3. Abrams, P. 1990. Ecological vs evolutionary consequencs of competition. – Oikos 57: 147–151.
4. Adler, F. R. and Muller-Landau, H. C. 2005. When do localized natural enemies increase species richness? – Ecol. Lett. 8: 438–447.
5. Adler, P. B. et al. 2007. A niche for neutrality. – Ecol. Lett. 10: 95–104.
6. Adler, P. B. et al. 2013. Trait-based tests of coexistence mechanisms. – Ecol. Lett. 16: 1294–1306.
7. Adler, P. B. et al. 2014. Functional traits explain variation in plant life history strategies. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111: 740–745.
8. Albert, C. H. et al. 2011. When and how should intraspecific variability be considered in trait-based plant ecology? – Persp. Plant Ecol. Evol. Syst. 13: 217–225.
9. Albert, C. H. et al. 2012. On the importance of intraspecific variability for the quantification of functional diversity. – Oikos 121: 116–126.
10. Araújo, M. S. et al. 2011. The ecological causes of individual specialisation. – Ecol. Lett. 14: 948–958.
11. Barabás, G. and Meszéna, G. 2009. When the exception becomes the rule: the disappearance of limiting similarity in the Lotka–Volterra model. – J. Theor. Biol. 258: 89–94.
12. Barabás, G. and D'Andrea, R. The effect of intraspecific variation and heritability on community pattern and robustness. – Ecol. Lett. in press.
13. Barabás, G. et al. 2012. Continuous coexistence or discrete species? A new review of an old question. – Evol. Ecol. Res. 14: 523–554.
14. Barabás, G. et al. 2013a. Species packing in nonsmooth competition models. – Theor. Ecol. 6: 1–19.
15. Barabás, G. et al. 2013b. Emergent neutrality or hidden niches? – Oikos 122: 1565–1572.
16. Barabás, G. et al. 2014. Sensitivity analysis of coexistence in ecological communities: theory and application. – Ecol. Lett. 17: 1479–1494.
17. Beaumont, M. 2010. Approximate Bayesian computation in evolution and ecology. – Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 41: 379–406.
18. Bell, G. 2001. Neutral macroecology. – Science 293: 2413–2418.
19. Bolnick, D. I. et al. 2011. Why intraspecific trait variation matters in community ecology. – Trends Ecol. Evol. 26: 183–192.
20. Bond, E. M. and Chase, J. M. 2002. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning at local and regional spatial scales. – Ecol. Lett. 5: 467–470.
21. Bonsall, M. B. et al. 2004. Life history tradeoffs assemble ecological guilds. – Science 306: 111–114.
22. Breitschwerdt, E. et al. 2015. Do newcomers stick to the rules of the residents? Designing trait-based community assembly tests. – J. Veg. Sci. 26: 219–232.
23. Burns, J. and Strauss, S. 2011. More closely related species are more ecologically similar in an experimental test. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108: 5302–5307.
24. Buttel, L. et al. 2002. Competition and species packing in patchy environments. – Theor. Popul. Biol. 61: 265–276.
25. Carboni, M. et al. 2014. Changes in trait divergence and convergence along a productivity gradient in wet meadows. – Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 182: 96–105.
26. Carlucci, M. B. et al. 2015. Between- and within-species trait variability and the assembly of sapling communities in forest patches. – J. Veg. Sci. 26: 21–31.
27. Cavender-Bares, J. et al. 2006. Phylogenetic structure of Floridian plant communities depends on taxonomic and spatial scale. – Ecology 87: S109–S122.
28. Cavender-Bares, J. et al. 2009. The merging of community ecology and phylogenetic biology. – Ecol. Lett. 12: 693–715.
29. Chave, J. et al. 2002. Comparing classical community models: theoretical consequences for patterns of diversity. – Am. Nat. 159: 1–23.
30. Chesson, P. 1991. A need for niches ? – Trends Ecol. Evol. 6: 26–28.
31. Chesson, P. 2000. Mechanisms of maintenance of species diversity. – Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 31: 343–366.
32. Chesson, P. and Huntly, N. 1997. The roles of harsh and fluctuating conditions in the dynamics of ecological communities. – Am. Nat. 150: 519–553.
33. Clark, J. S. 2012. The coherence problem with the unified neutral theory of biodiversity. – Trends Ecol. Evol. 27: 199–203.
34. Cody, M. L. 1999. Assembly rules at different scales in plant and bird communities. – In: Weiher, E. and Keddy, P. (eds), Ecological assembly rules: perspecitves, advances, retreats. Cambridge Univ. Press, pp. 165–204.
35. Cornwell, W. K. and Ackerly, D. D. 2009. Community assembly and shifts in plant trait distributions across an environmental gradient in coastal California. – Ecol. Monogr. 79: 109–126.
36. Cornwell, W. K. et al. 2006. A trait-based test for habitat filtering: convex hull volume. – Ecology 87: 1465–1471.
37. Courbaud, B. et al. 2010. Intra-specific variability and the competition–colonisation tradeoff: coexistence, abundance and stability patterns. – Theor. Ecol. 5: 61–71.
38. D'Andrea, R. and Ostling, A. 2015. Can clustering in genotype space reveal “niches”? – Am. Nat. 187: 130–135.
39. D'Andrea, R. et al. 2013. Revising the tolerance–fecundity tradeoff; or, on the consequences of discontinuous resource use for limiting similarity, species diversity and trait dispersion. – Am. Nat. 181: E91–E101.
40. Dayan, T. and Simberloff, D. 2005. Ecological and community-wide character displacement: the next generation. – Ecol. Lett. 8: 875–894.
41. de Bello, F. et al. 2012. Functional species pool framework to test for biotic effects on community assembly. – Ecology 93: 2263–2273.
42. Deza, M. M. and Deza, E. 2006. Dictionary of distances. – Elsevier.
43. Doebeli, M. et al. 2007. Multimodal pattern formation in phenotype distributions of sexual populations. – Proc. R. Soc. B 274: 347–357.
44. Ernebjerg, M. and Kishony, R. 2011. Dynamic phenotypic clustering in noisy ecosystems. – PLoS Comput. Biol. 7: e1002017.
45. Fort, H. et al. 2010. The clumping transition in niche competition: a robust critical phenomenon. – J. Stat. Mech. Theor. Exp. 2010: P05005.
46. Franzén, D. 2004. Plant species coexistence and dispersion of seed traits in a grassland. – Ecography 27: 218–224.
47. Fussmann, G. F. et al. 2007. Eco-evolutionary dynamics of communities and ecosystems. – Funct. Ecol. 21: 465–477.
48. Google Ngram Viewer. 2015. Limiting similarity. – Google books Ngram Viewer.
49. Gotelli, N. J. and Graves, G. R. 1996. Null models in ecology. – Smithsonian Institution.
50. Gotelli, N. J. and McGill, B. J. 2006. Null versus neutral models: what's the difference? – Ecography 29: 793–800.
51. Götzenberger, L. et al. 2012. Ecological assembly rules in plant communities-approaches, patterns and prospects. – Biol. Rev. 87: 111–127.
52. Gravel, D. et al. 2006. Reconciling niche and neutrality: the continuum hypothesis. – Ecol. Lett. 9: 399–409.
53. Gross, K. et al. 2014. Species richness and the temporal stability of biomass production: a new analysis of recent biodiversity experiments. – Am. Nat. 183: 1–12.
54. Haegeman, B. et al. 2014. Predicting coexistence of plants subject to a tolerance–competition tradeoff. – J. Math. Biol. 68: 1815–1847.
55. Herben, T. and Goldberg, D. E. 2014. Community assembly by limiting similarity vs competitive hierarchies: testing the consequences of dispersion of individual traits. – J. Ecol. 102: 156–166.
56. Hernández-García, E. et al. 2009. Species competition: coexistence, exclusion and clustering. – Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A 367: 3183–3195.
57. HilleRisLambers, J. et al. 2012. Rethinking community assembly through the lens of coexistence theory. – Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 43: 227–248.
58. Hubbell, S. P. 2001. The unified theory of biodiversity and biogeography. Monogr. Popul. Biol. – Princeton Univ. Press.
59. Hubbell, S. P. 2006. Neutral theory and the evolution of ecological equivalence. – Ecology 87: 1387–1398.
60. Hulshof, C. M. and Swenson, N. G. 2010. Variation in leaf functional trait values within and across individuals and species: an example from a Costa Rican dry forest. – Funct. Ecol. 24: 217–223.
61. Hutchinson, G. E. 1959. Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why are there so many kinds of animals? – Am. Nat. 93: 145–159.
62. Jeraldo, P. et al. 2012. Quantification of the relative roles of niche and neutral processes in structuring gastrointestinal microbiomes. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109: 9692–9698.
63. Jiang, L. et al. 2010. An experimental test of Darwin's naturalization hypothesis. – Am. Nat. 175: 415–423.
64. Johansson, M. E. and Keddy, P. 1991. Intensity and asymmetry of competition between plant pairs of different degrees of similarity – an experimental-study on 2 guilds of wetland plants. – Oikos 60: 27–34.
65. Kinzig, P. et al. 1999. Limiting similarity, species packing and system stability for hierarchical competition–colonization models. – Am. Nat. 153: 371–383.
66. Kneitel, J. M. and Chase, J. M. 2004. Tradeoffs in community ecology: linking spatial scales and species coexistence. – Ecol. Lett. 7: 69–80.
67. Kohyama, T. 1993. Size-structured tree populations in gap-dynamic forest – the forest architecture hypothesis for the stable coexistence of species. – J. Ecol. 81: 131–143.
68. Kohyama, T. 2006. The effect of patch demography on the community structure of forest trees. – Ecol. Res. 21: 346–355.
69. Kraft, N. J. B. and Ackerly, D. D. 2010. Functional trait and phylogenetic tests of community assembly across spatial scales in an Amazonian forest. – Ecol. Monogr. 80: 401–422.
70. Kraft, N. J. B. et al. 2008. Functional traits and niche-based tree community assembly in an Amazonian forest. – Science 322: 580–582.
71. Kraft, N. J. B. et al. 2014. Plant functional traits and the multidimensional nature of species coexistence. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112: 797–802.
72. Kunstler, G. et al. 2012. Competitive interactions between forest trees are driven by species' trait hierarchy, not phylogenetic or functional similarity: implications for forest community assembly. – Ecol. Lett. 15: 831–840.
73. Lake, J. K. and Ostling, A. 2009. Comment on “Functional traits and niche-based tree community assembly in an Amazonian forest”. – Science 324: 1015; author reply 1015.
74. Laliberté, E. and Legendre, P. 2010. A distance-based framework for measuring functional diversity from multiple traits. – Ecology 91: 299–305.
75. Lasky, J. R. et al. 2014a. Trait-mediated assembly processes predict successional changes in community diversity of tropical forests. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111: 5616–5621.
76. Lasky, J. R. et al. 2014b. The role of functional traits and individual variation in the co-occurrence of Ficus species. – Ecology 95: 978–990.
77. Lasky, J. R. et al. 2015. Ontogenetic shifts in trait-mediated mechanisms of plant community assembly. – Ecology 96: 2157–2169.
78. Lawson, D. J. and Jensen, H. J. 2007. Neutral evolution in a biological population as diffusion in phenotype space: reproduction with local mutation but without selection. – Phys. Rev. Lett. 98: 2–5.
79. Leimar, O. et al. 2008. Evolution of phenotypic clusters through competition and local adaptation along an environmental gradient. – Evolution 62: 807–822.
80. Letten, A. D. et al. 2014. Phylogenetic and functional dissimilarity does not increase during temporal heathland succession. – Proc. R. Soc. B 2014 281 20142102.
81. Levin, S. 1970. Community equilibria and stability, and an extension of the competitive exclusion principle. – Am. Nat. 104: 413–423.
82. MacArthur, R. and Levins, R. 1967. The limiting similarity, convergence and divergence of coexisting species. – Am. Nat. 101: 377–385.
83. Manly, B. F. J. 1991. Randomization and Monte-Carlo methods in biology. – Chapman and Hall.
84. Mason, N. W. H. et al. 2005. Functional richness, functional evenness and functional divergence : the primary components of functional diversity. – Oikos 111: 112–118.
85. May, R. M. 1973. Stability and complexity in model ecosystems. – Princeton Univ. Press.
86. May, R. M. and MacArthur, R. H. 1972. Niche overlap as a function of environmental variability. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 69: 1109–1113.
87. Mayfield, M. M. and Levine, J. M. 2010. Opposing effects of competitive exclusion on the phylogenetic structure of communities. – Ecol. Lett. 13: 1085–1093.
88. McGill, B. J. et al. 2005. Community inertia of Quaternary small mammal assemblages in North America. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 102: 16701–16706.
89. Moles, A. T. and Westoby, M. 2004. Seedling survival and seed size: a synthesis of the literature. – J. Ecol. 92: 372–383.
90. Mouillot, D. et al. 2005. Functional regularity: a neglected aspect of functional diversity. – Oecologia 142: 353–359.
91. Muller-Landau, H. C. 2010. The tolerance-fecundity tradeoff and the maintenance of diversity in seed size. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107: 4242–4247.
92. Ostling, A. M. 2012. Large-scale spatial synchrony and the stability of forest biodiversity revisited. – J. Plant Ecol. 5: 52–63.
93. Pacala, S. W. and Tilman, D. 1994. Limiting similarity in mechanistic and spatial models of plant competition in heterogeneous environments. – Am. Nat. 143: 222–257.
94. Pacala, S. W. and Rees, M. 1998. Models suggesting field experiments to test two hypotheses explaining successional diversity. – Am. Nat. 152: 729–737.
95. Pacala, S. W. et al. 1993. Forest models defined by field measurements. I. The design of a northeastern forest simulator. – Can. J. For. Res. 23:1980–1988.
96. Paine, C. E. T. et al. 2011. Functional traits of individual trees reveal ecological constraints on community assembly in tropical rain forests. – Oikos 120: 720–727.
97. Pigot, A. L. and Etienne, R. S. 2015. A new dynamic null model for phylogenetic community structure. – Ecol. Lett. 18: 153–163.
98. Poorter, A. L. et al. 2008. Are functional traits good predictors of demographic rates ? Evidence from five Neotropical forests. – Ecology 89: 1908–1920.
99. Rosindell, J. et al. 2011. The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography at age ten. – Trends Ecol. Evol. 26: 340–348.
100. Roughgarden, J. 1974. Species packing and the competition function with illustrations from coral reef fish. – Theor. Popul. Biol. 5: 163–186.
101. Roughgarden, J. 1983. Competition and theory in community ecology. – Am. Nat. 122: 583–601.
102. Scheffer, M. and van Nes, E. H. 2006. Self-organized similarity, the evolutionary emergence of groups of similar species. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103 :6230–6235.
103. Schleuter, D. et al. 2010. A user's guide to functional diversity indices. – Ecol. Monogr. 80: 469–484.
104. Schwinning, S. and Weiner, J. 1998. Mechanisms determining the degree of size asymmetry in competition among plants. – Oecologia 113: 447–455.
105. Segura, A. M. et al. 2011. Emergent neutrality drives phytoplankton species coexistence. – Proc. R. Soc. B 278: 2355–2361.
106. Siefert, A. 2012. Incorporating intraspecific variation in tests of trait-based community assembly. – Oecologia 170: 767–775.
107. Siepielski, A. M. and McPeek, M. A. 2010. On the evidence for species coexistence: a critique of the coexistence program. – Ecology 91: 3153–3164.
108. Silva, R. R. and Brandão, C. R. F. 2014. Ecosystem-wide morphological structure of leaf-litter ant communities along a tropical latitudinal gradient. – PLoS ONE 9 (3):e93049.
109. Simberloff, D. and Boecklen, W. 1981. Santa Rosalia reconsidered: size ratios and competition. – Evolution 35: 1206–1228.
110. Sterck, F. et al. 2011. Functional traits determine tradeoffs and niches in a tropical forest community. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108: 20627–20632.
111. Strong Jr, D. R. et al. 1979. Test of community-wide character displacement against null hypotheses. – Evolution 33: 897–913.
112. Stubbs, W. J. and Wilson, J. B. 2004. Evidence for limiting similarity in a sand dune community. – J. Ecol. 92: 557–567.
113. Swenson, N. G. and Enquist, B. J. 2009. Opposing assembly mechanisms in a Neotropical dry forest: implications for phylogenetic and functional community ecology. – Ecology 90: 2161–2170.
114. Swenson, N. G. et al. 2007. The influence of spatial and size scale on phylogenetic relatedness in tropical forest communities. – Ecology 88: 1770–1780.
115. Tilman, D. 1994. Competition and biodiversity in spatially structured habitats. – Ecology 75: 2–16.
116. Tilman, D. 2004. Niche tradeoffs, neutrality and community structure: a stochastic theory of resource competition, invasion and community assembly. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 101: 10854–10861.
117. Turelli, M. 1981. Niche overlap and invasion of competitors in random environments. I. Models without demographic stochasticity. – Theor. Popul. Biol. 56: 1–56.
118. Ulrich, W. 2004. Species co-occurrences and neutral models: reassessing J. M. Diamond's assembly rules. – Oikos 107: 603–609.
119. Uriarte, M. et al. 2010. Trait similarity, shared ancestry and the structure of neighbourhood interactions in a subtropical wet forest: implications for community assembly. – Ecol. Lett. 13: 1503–1514.
120. van der Plas, F. et al. 2015. A new modeling approach estimates the relative importance of different community assembly processes. – Ecology 96: 1502–1515.
121. Vergnon, R. et al. 2009. Niches versus neutrality: uncovering the drivers of diversity in a species-rich community. – Ecol. Lett. 12: 1079–1090.
122. Vergnon, R. et al. 2012. Emergent neutrality leads to multimodal species abundance distributions. – Nat. Comm. 3: 663.
123. Villéger, S. et al. 2008. New multidimensional functional diversity indices for a multifaceted framework in functional ecology. – Ecology 89: 2290–2301.
124. Violle, C. et al. 2007. Let the concept of trait be functional! – Oikos 116: 882–892.
125. Violle, C. et al. 2012. The return of the variance: intraspecific variability in community ecology. – Trends Ecol. Evol. 27: 244–252.
126. Waples, R. S. et al. 2011. Calculating Ne and Ne/N in age-structured populations: a hybrid Felsenstein–Hill approach. – Ecology 92: 1513–1522.
127. Weiher, E. and Keddy, P. (eds) 1999. Ecological assembly rules: perspectives, advances, retreats. – Cambridge Univ. Press.
128. Weiher, E. et al. 1998. Community assembly rules, morphological dispersion and the coexistence of plant species. – Oikos 81: 309–322.
129. Wills, C. et al. 1997. Strong density- and diversity-related effects help to maintain tree species diversity in a neotropical forest. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 94: 1252–1257.
130. Wilson, J. B. 1999. Assembly rules in plant communities. – In: Weiher, E. and Keddy, P. (eds), Ecological assembly rules: perspecitves, advances, retreats. Cambridge Univ. Press, pp. 130–160.
131. Wilson, J. B. and Stubbs, W. J. 2012. Evidence for assembly rules: limiting similarity within a saltmarsh. – J. Ecol. 100: 210–221.
132. Wright, I. J. et al. 2004. The worldwide leaf economics spectrum. – Nature 428: 821–827.
133. Wright, S. J. et al. 2010. Functional traits and the growth–mortality tradeoff in tropical trees. – Ecology 91: 3664–3674.
134. Yachi, S. and Loreau, M. 1999. Biodiversity and ecosystem productivity in a fluctuating environment: the insurance hypothesis. – Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 96: 1463–1468.
135. Yan, B. et al. 2012. Trait assembly of woody plants in communities across sub-alpine gradients: identifying the role of limiting similarity. – J. Veg. Sci. 23: 698–708.
136. Yoshiyama, R. M. and Roughgarden, J. 1977. Species packing in two dimensions. – Am. Nat. 111: 107–121.