Fayle Tom M, Eggleton Paul, Manica Andrea, Yusah Kalsum M, Foster William A
Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre of Academy of Sciences Czech Republic and Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 31, 370 05, České Budějovice, Czech Republic; Forest Ecology and Conservation Group, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Buckhurst Road, Berkshire, SL5 7PY, UK; Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, 88400, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.
Ecol Lett. 2015 Mar;18(3):254-62. doi: 10.1111/ele.12403. Epub 2015 Jan 27.
Understanding how species assemble into communities is a key goal in ecology. However, assembly rules are rarely tested experimentally, and their ability to shape real communities is poorly known. We surveyed a diverse community of epiphyte-dwelling ants and found that similar-sized species co-occurred less often than expected. Laboratory experiments demonstrated that invasion was discouraged by the presence of similarly sized resident species. The size difference for which invasion was less likely was the same as that for which wild species exhibited reduced co-occurrence. Finally we explored whether our experimentally derived assembly rules could simulate realistic communities. Communities simulated using size-based species assembly exhibited diversities closer to wild communities than those simulated using size-independent assembly, with results being sensitive to the combination of rules employed. Hence, species segregation in the wild can be driven by competitive species assembly, and this process is sufficient to generate observed species abundance distributions for tropical epiphyte-dwelling ants.
了解物种如何组装成群落是生态学的一个关键目标。然而，组装规则很少通过实验进行测试，而且它们塑造真实群落的能力也鲜为人知。我们调查了一个多样化的附生蚁群落，发现体型相似的物种同时出现的频率低于预期。实验室实验表明，体型相似的常驻物种的存在会阻碍入侵。入侵可能性较小的体型差异与野生物种共现减少的体型差异相同。最后，我们探讨了我们通过实验得出的组装规则是否能够模拟现实的群落。使用基于体型的物种组装模拟的群落比使用与体型无关的组装模拟的群落表现出更接近野生群落的多样性，结果对所采用规则的组合很敏感。因此，野外的物种隔离可能是由竞争性物种组装驱动的，并且这个过程足以产生观察到的热带附生蚁的物种丰度分布。
