Community assembly dynamics in space
This chapter discusses how the spatial scale at which the assembly of ecological communities occurs may influence the degree of determinism and historical contingency in community structure. The chapter focuses on patch size, patch isolation and the scale at which environmental conditions vary as spatial factors that affect community assembly. In combination, these factors are proposed to affect three elements of assembly dynamics: the rate of immigration to local communities, the degree to which the species pool is external to local community dynamics and the amount of variation in immigration history among local communities. These elements are then hypothesized to jointly determine the degree of historical contingency. The chapter concludes by suggesting a future research direction: refining the hypotheses discussed here through explicit consideration of species traits.
Keywords: community structure, dispersal, historical contingency, immigration, species traits
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