Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Botany, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Sep 27;108(39):16317-21. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1101019108. Epub 2011 Sep 19.
The coexistence of multiple species on a smaller number of limiting resources is an enduring ecological paradox. The mechanisms that maintain such biodiversity are of great interest to ecology and of central importance to conservation. We describe and prove a unique and robust mechanism for coexistence: Species that differ only in their dispersal abilities can coexist, if habitat patches are distributed at irregular distances. This mechanism is straightforward and ecologically intuitive, but can nevertheless create complex coexistence patterns that are robust to substantial environmental stochasticity. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is noted for its diversity of reef fish species and its complex arrangement of reef habitat. We demonstrate that this mechanism can allow fish species with different pelagic larval durations to stably coexist in the GBR. Further, coexisting species on the GBR often dominate different subregions, defined primarily by cross-shelf position. Interspecific differences in dispersal ability generate similar coexistence patterns when dispersal is influenced by larval behavior and variable oceanographic conditions. Many marine and terrestrial ecosystems are characterized by patchy habitat distributions and contain coexisting species that have different dispersal abilities. This coexistence mechanism is therefore likely to have ecological relevance beyond reef fish.
在较少的限制资源上共存多个物种是一个持久的生态悖论。维持这种生物多样性的机制是生态学的重要关注点，也是保护的核心。我们描述并证明了一种独特而稳健的共存机制：如果栖息地斑块以不规则的距离分布，那么仅在扩散能力上存在差异的物种就可以共存。这种机制简单直观，但可以创造出对大量环境随机性具有稳健性的复杂共存模式。大堡礁（GBR）以其丰富的珊瑚鱼物种和复杂的珊瑚礁栖息地分布而闻名。我们证明，这种机制可以使具有不同浮游幼体持续时间的鱼类在 GBR 中稳定共存。此外，在 GBR 共存的物种通常主要由跨架位置定义的不同亚区占优势。当扩散受幼虫行为和可变海洋条件影响时，扩散能力的种间差异会产生相似的共存模式。许多海洋和陆地生态系统的特点是斑块状的栖息地分布，并包含具有不同扩散能力的共存物种。因此，这种共存机制很可能超越珊瑚鱼具有生态学意义。
