A unified model explains commonness and rarity on coral reefs

Connolly, Sean R.; Hughes, Terry P.; Bellwood, David R.

doi:10.1111/ele.12751

Cited by 39 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…One possible solution is the use of mechanistic models, which simulate biological processes. These allow researchers to test how well variables such as species richness, diversification and dispersal can be explained by simple parameters, such as habitat changes (Connolly, Hughes, & Bellwood, ; Descombes et al, ). However, the assumptions in those models are often simplistic and may not necessarily demonstrate causality (McGill & Potochnik, ).…”

Section: Emerging Methodologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why mountains matter for biodiversity

Perrigo

Hoorn

Antonelli

2019

Journal of Biogeography

235

141

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Mountains are arguably Earth's most striking features. They play a major role in determining global and regional climates, are the source of most rivers, act as cradles, barriers and bridges for species, and are crucial for the survival and sustainability of many human societies. The complexity of mountains is tightly associated with high biodiversity, but the processes underlying this association are poorly known. Solving this puzzle requires researchers to generate more primary data, and better integrate available geological and climatic data into biological models of diversity and evolution. In this perspective, we highlight emerging insights, which stress the importance of mountain building through time as a generator and reservoir of biodiversity. We also discuss recently proposed parallels between surface uplift, habitat formation and species diversification. We exemplify these links and discuss other factors, such as Quaternary climatic variations, which may have obscured some mountain‐building evidence due to erosion and other processes. Biological evolution is complex and the build‐up of mountains is certainly not the only explanation, but biological and geological processes are probably more intertwined than many of us realize. The overall conclusion is that geology sets the stage for speciation, where ecological interactions, adaptive and non‐adaptive radiations and stochastic processes act together to increase biodiversity. Further integration of these fields may yield novel and robust insights.

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Section: Emerging Methodologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why mountains matter for biodiversity

Perrigo

Hoorn

Antonelli

2019

Journal of Biogeography

235

141

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“…The zero‐sum analog of the multiple‐samples sampling formula has only been explored for the point‐mutation speciation process and neutral dispersal‐limited sampling (Etienne ; Connolly, Hughes & Bellwood 6). Here we apply the independent species sampling formula on the same datasets.…”

Section: Comparison To Models With Zero‐sum Sampling Formulamentioning

confidence: 99%

A general sampling formula for community structure data

Haegeman

Etienne

2017

Methods Ecol Evol

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Summary1. The development of neutral community theory has shown that the assumption of species neutrality, although implausible on the level of individual species, can lead to reasonable predictions on the community level. While Hubbell's neutral model and several of its variants have been analysed in quite some detail, the comparison of theoretical predictions with empirical abundance data is often hindered by technical problems. Only for a few models the exact solution of the stationary abundance distribution is known and sufficiently simple to be applied to data. For other models, approximate solutions have been proposed, but their accuracy is questionable. 2. Here, we argue that many of these technical problems can be overcome by replacing the assumption of constant community size (the zero-sum constraint) by the assumption of independent species abundances. 3. We present a general sampling formula for community abundance data under this assumption. We show that for the few models for which an exact solution with zero-sum constraint is known, our independent species approach leads to very similar parameter estimates as the zero-sum models, for six frequently studied tropical forest community samples. 4. We show that our general sampling formula can be easily confronted to a much wider range of datasets (very large datasets, relative abundance data, presence-absence data, and sets of multiple samples) for a large class of models, including non-neutral ones. We provide an R package, called SADISA (Species Abundance Distributions under the Independent Species Assumption), to facilitate the use of the sampling formula.

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“…Demographic correlates, including negative density dependence, have been the subject of most previous work on rarity (see e.g. Connolly et al 2017;Yenni et al 2017). Beyond such population-level properties of rare species, almost nothing is known about the individual-level traits that enable, or evolve in response to, chronic rarity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rarity and persistence

Vermeij

Grosberg

2017

Ecology Letters

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Rarity is a population characteristic that is usually associated with a high risk of extinction. We argue here, however, that chronically rare species (those with low population densities over many generations across their entire ranges) may have individual-level traits that make populations more resistant to extinction. The major obstacle to persistence at low density is successful fertilisation (union between egg and sperm), and chronically rare species are more likely to survive when (1) fertilisation occurs inside or close to an adult, (2) mate choice involves long-distance signals, (3) adults or their surrogate gamete dispersers are highly mobile, or (4) the two sexes are combined in a single individual. In contrast, external fertilisation and wind-or water-driven passive dispersal of gametes, or sluggish or sedentary adult life habits in the absence of gamete vectors, appear to be incompatible with sustained rarity. We suggest that the documented increase in frequency of these traits among marine genera over geological time could explain observed secular decreases in rates of background extinction. Unanswered questions remain about how common chronic rarity actually is, which traits are consistently associated with chronic rarity, and how chronically rare species are distributed among taxa, and among the world's ecosystems and regions.

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A unified model explains commonness and rarity on coral reefs

Cited by 39 publications

References 52 publications

Why mountains matter for biodiversity

Why mountains matter for biodiversity

A general sampling formula for community structure data

Rarity and persistence

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