O'Dwyer J P, Lake J K, Ostling A, Savage V M, Green J L
Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-5289, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Apr 14;106(15):6170-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0813041106. Epub 2009 Mar 31.
We present a theoretical framework to describe stochastic, size-structured community assembly, and use this framework to make community-level ecological predictions. Our model can be thought of as adding biological realism to Neutral Biodiversity Theory by incorporating size variation and growth dynamics, and allowing demographic rates to depend on the sizes of individuals. We find that the species abundance distribution (SAD) is insensitive to the details of the size structure in our model, demonstrating that the SAD is a poor indicator of size-dependent processes. We also derive the species biomass distribution (SBD) and find that the form of the SBD depends on the underlying size structure. This leads to a prescription for testing multiple, intertwined ecological predictions of the model, and provides evidence that alternatives to the traditional SAD are more closely tied to certain ecological processes. Finally, we describe how our framework may be extended to make predictions for more general types of community structure.
我们提出了一个理论框架来描述随机的、具有大小结构的群落组装，并使用这个框架进行群落水平的生态预测。我们的模型可以被认为是通过纳入大小变化和生长动态，以及允许种群统计速率依赖于个体大小，从而为中性生物多样性理论增添了生物学现实性。我们发现，在我们的模型中，物种丰度分布（SAD）对大小结构的细节不敏感，这表明SAD是一个依赖大小过程的不良指标。我们还推导出了物种生物量分布（SBD），并发现SBD的形式取决于潜在的大小结构。这为检验该模型的多个相互交织的生态预测提供了一个方法，并提供了证据表明传统SAD的替代指标与某些生态过程的联系更为紧密。最后，我们描述了如何扩展我们的框架以对更一般类型的群落结构进行预测。
