Ecol Evol. 2012 Aug;2(8):1781-90. doi: 10.1002/ece3.292. Epub 2012 Jun 27.
Speciation is the "elephant in the room" of community ecology. As the ultimate source of biodiversity, its integration in ecology's theoretical corpus is necessary to understand community assembly. Yet, speciation is often completely ignored or stripped of its spatial dimension. Recent approaches based on network theory have allowed ecologists to effectively model complex landscapes. In this study, we use this framework to model allopatric and parapatric speciation in networks of communities. We focus on the relationship between speciation, richness, and the spatial structure of communities. We find a strong opposition between speciation and local richness, with speciation being more common in isolated communities and local richness being higher in more connected communities. Unlike previous models, we also find a transition to a positive relationship between speciation and local richness when dispersal is low and the number of communities is small. We use several measures of centrality to characterize the effect of network structure on diversity. The degree, the simplest measure of centrality, is the best predictor of local richness and speciation, although it loses some of its predictive power as connectivity grows. Our framework shows how a simple neutral model can be combined with network theory to reveal complex relationships between speciation, richness, and the spatial organization of populations.
物种形成是群落生态学中的“大象在房间里”。作为生物多样性的最终来源,其在生态学理论体系中的整合对于理解群落组装是必要的。然而,物种形成通常被完全忽视或剥夺了其空间维度。最近基于网络理论的方法使生态学家能够有效地对复杂景观进行建模。在这项研究中,我们使用这个框架在社区网络中对异域和邻域物种形成进行建模。我们专注于物种形成、丰富度和社区空间结构之间的关系。我们发现物种形成与局部丰富度之间存在强烈的对立,在孤立的社区中物种形成更为常见,而在连接更紧密的社区中局部丰富度更高。与之前的模型不同,我们还发现当扩散率较低且社区数量较少时,物种形成与局部丰富度之间的关系会转变为正相关。我们使用几种中心性度量来描述网络结构对多样性的影响。度是最简单的中心性度量,是局部丰富度和物种形成的最佳预测指标,尽管随着连通性的增加,它失去了一些预测能力。我们的框架展示了一个简单的中性模型如何与网络理论相结合,揭示物种形成、丰富度和种群空间组织之间的复杂关系。