Metacommunity
Xue Kui
Oct 24, 2022
Community Ecology
- Community ecology, which is primarily concerned with patterns of species distribution, abundance and interactions.
A fundamental question:
Spatial Scale.
Community Ecology
The clear limitation:
Focus on local-scale processes
- Species interaction
- Biodiversity
- ....
Community Ecology
The clear limitation:
Focus on local-scale processes
- Species interaction
- Biodiversity
- ....
The major weakness of traditional community ecology, and why it has so conspicuously failed to come up with many patterns, rules and workable contingent theory, is its overwhelming emphasis on localness.
— Lawton (1999)
To resolve this limitation, is there any workable concept / approach ?
To resolve this limitation, is there any workable concept / approach ?
A potential framework is
To resolve this limitation, is there any workable concept / approach ?
A potential framework is
Metacommunity
To resolve this limitation, is there any workable concept / approach ?
A potential framework is
Metacommunity
(集合群落)
scale
/skeɪl/
dispersal
/dɪˈspɜːrsl/
heterogeneity
/ˌhetərədʒəˈniːəti/
...
Hierarchical framework
Scale up
Population dynamics
Community-process
Metacommunity-
process
Metacommunity-
process
A study case
- Asynchrony among local communities stabilises ecosystem function of
metacommunities.
Reference
Leibold, M. and J. Chase. Metacommunity Ecology, Volume 59. Princeton University Press, 2017.
Wikipedia. Metacommunity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacommunity. 2022.
Wilcox, K. R., A. T. Tredennick, S. E. Koerner, et al. "Asynchrony among local communities stabilises ecosystem function of metacommunities". In: Ecology Letters 20.12 (2017).
群落生态学中一个重要的问题就是尺度问题，很多研究都不可避免地包含在一个限定区域内。小尺度可能倾向于用小尺度的过程描述（比如种间竞争），大尺度用大尺度过程来描述；
而传统的群落生态学观点，比如物种互作、共生、生物多样性，存在明显的局限性，即，主要关注于局部尺度。这些过程中发现的模式、规律，可能会受到争议。controversy
那么有没有一种可行的方法应对这种局限性？一个潜在的框架：metacommunity。
它将许多关键方面联系起来，跨尺度探索生态关系。
我们可以通过meta群落的方法获得不同层次的过程和模式。从种群动态扩展到局部群落水平的过程，或者生态系统水平过程（更大尺度）
为了更好地预测生态系统对环境变化的响应，关键的一步是量化生态系统功能的稳定性。