Assembly Theory for Restoring Ecosystem Structure and Functioning: Timing is Everything?

Abstract

The field of ecology focuses on interactions between organisms and between organisms and their environment. This includes an explicit focus on a large variety of different ways that species interact with one another. Such interactions form the basis of a key question in ecology, namely, what is found where and why? Species can have positive, neutral or negative effects on each other. The most famous ecological interactions are those of predation and competition. In plant ecology, we often invoke competition as the key driver of interactions between species that require the same essential resources.However, we focus on, and know a lot less about, positive interactions in nature. Mutualism occurs when both partners benefit from the interaction in some way. During pollination, one organism (e.g., a bumble bee) indirectly improves the performance of another organism by pollinating a flower and enabling a plant Theory and Application• Interactions between species can have important implications for community assembly.• Priority effects, caused by first arrivals, occur in many habitats and can lead to different ecosystem trajectories and alternative states. • There is potential for using priority effects during restoration to steer toward desired outcomes. • The strength of priority effects seems to relate indirectly to inter-annual weather conditions. • Consequently, we now need to start setting up multiple-initiation experiments and restoration projects to tease apart the relative role of stochastic versus directed assembly drivers.

Links between community ecology theory and ecological restoration are on the rise

“…Elements of the hierarchical filter concept appeared quite often, which posits that community membership is restricted to sets of species which can overcome dispersal limitation and withstand simultaneous abiotic and biotic constraints (“filters”). Assembly rules has served as a conceptual benchmark for restoration for some time (Hobbs & Norton, ), and the restoration literature is replete with case studies invoking its various components (Temperton et al., ). For example, Funk, Hoffacker, and Matzek () utilized the hierarchical filter concept to design a restoration experiment that restored a California grassland by manipulating the assembly filters of dispersal (via native seed addition), abiotic conditions (via summer irrigation) and biotic conditions (via grazing) to favour establishment of native over exotic species.…”

“…Community assembly Determinants (across a variety of spatial and temporal scales) of species memberships in a community at a given time Hobbs and Norton (2004), Funk et al (2008), Temperton, Baasch, von Gillhaussen, and Kirmer (2016), Weiher and Keddy (2001) 237…”

“…Elements of the hierarchical filter concept appeared quite often, which posits that community membership is restricted to sets of species which can overcome dispersal limitation and withstand simultaneous abiotic and biotic constraints ("filters"). Assembly rules has served as a conceptual benchmark for restoration for some time (Hobbs & Norton, 2004), and the restoration literature is replete with case studies invoking its various components (Temperton et al, 2016).…”

The Importance of Being First: Exploring Priority and Diversity Effects in a Grassland Field Experiment

“…In addition, priority effects can have a stronger influence on community composition than abiotic conditions (Fukami, 2015). As such, priority effects may be a powerful tool for ecological restoration, since the order of arrival or initial plant species composition can be manipulated in ecological restoration (Schantz et al, 2015; Vaughn and Young, 2015; Temperton et al, 2016). Priority effects, for example, may be useful for sending plant communities on desired trajectories for restoration.…”

The exotic species Senecio inaequidens pays the price for arriving late in temperate European grasslands

“…Second, the identification of native plant community characteristics affecting their susceptibility to invasion (invasibility), such as the disturbance regime (Chytrý et al 2008;Seastedt & Pyšek 2011), fluctuations in resource availability (Davis, Grime & Thompson 2000;Liu, Zhang & van Kleunen 2018), species and functional group richness (Tilman 1997;Knops et al 1999;Naeem et al 2000;Wardle 2001;Kennedy et al 2002;Fargione & Tilman 2005;Pokorny et al 2005;Scherber et al 2010;Mason, French & Jolley 2017) species and functional group composition (Crawley et al 1999;Prieur-Richard et al 2002;Fargione, Brown & Tilman 2004;Wardle et al 2011;Byun, de Blois & Brisson 2013;Yannelli et al 2017), and the presence of natural enemies (Keane & Crawley 2002;Shea & Chesson 2002;Levine, Adler & Yelenik 2004). Because exotic species often germinate more quickly, grow faster, and take up resources more efficiently than native species (Wainwright, Wolkovich & Cleland 2012;Wilsey, Barber & Martin 2015), the invasion process is also tightly linked to the concept of priority effect in ecology, in which the species arriving first at a site significantly affect the development, growth, and reproduction of species arriving later (Chase 2003;Vannette & Fukami 2014;Temperton et al 2016).…”