Emergent neutrality drives phytoplankton species coexistence

Segura, Ángel M.; Calliari, Danilo; Kruk, Carla; Conde, Daniel; Bonilla, Sylvia; Fort, Hugo

doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.2464

Cited by 66 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(68 reference statements)

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“…1). In turn, significant differences in growth rate, sinking rates, demographic properties and competitive ability have been shown for these groups Segura et al, 2011Segura et al, , 2010. For example, group I represents small, high surface to volume ratio (S/V) organisms, with high growth rate and low sinking, and with better competitive ability at the beginning of temporal succession.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

The habitat template of phytoplankton morphology-based functional groups

2012

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The identification of the main factors driving phytoplankton community structure is essential to understand and adequately manage freshwater ecosystems. We hypothesize that differences in morphological traits reflect phytoplankton functional properties that will be selected under particular environmental conditions, namely their habitat template. We apply a morphology-based functional groups (MBFG) approach to classify phytoplankton organisms and define each group template. We use machine learning techniques to classify a large number of phytoplankton communities and environmental variables from different climate zones and continents. Random forest analysis explained well the distribution of most groups' biovolume and the selected variables reflected ecological preferences according to morphology. By means of a classification tree it was also possible to identify thresholds of the environmental variables promoting groups dominance in different lakes. For example group III (filaments with aerotopes and high surface/ volume including potentially toxic species) was dominant when light attenuation coefficient was[3.9 m -1 and total nitrogen was[2,800 lg l -1 . We demonstrate that morphology captures ecological preferences of phytoplankton groups and provides empirical values to describe their habitat template.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

The habitat template of phytoplankton morphology-based functional groups

2012

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“…Recently, a novel empirical test pointed to EN as the only theory consistent with patterns observed within a real marine phytoplankton community 28 . Further analyses carried out on different communities are now being published 29,30 that will ultimately show how common this result is.…”

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confidence: 99%

Emergent neutrality leads to multimodal species abundance distributions

2012

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Recent analyses of data sampled in communities ranging from corals and fossil brachiopods to birds and phytoplankton suggest that their species abundance distributions have multiple modes, a pattern predicted by none of the existing theories. Here we show that the multimodal pattern is consistent with predictions from the theory of emergent neutrality. This adds to the observations, suggesting that natural communities may be shaped by the evolutionary emergence of groups of similar species that coexist in niches. such self-organized similarity unifies niche and neutral theories of biodiversity.

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“…This phenomenon of spontaneous emergence of self-organized clusters of look-alikes separated by gaps with no survivors was dubbed emergent neutrality (EN). It was recognized as an important new finding in an established model in ecology [26,27] since there is empirical evidence for self-organized coexistence of similar species in communities ranging from mammal [28] and bird communities [29] to plankton [30,31]. However, it wasn't clear whether this lumpy distribution of species was an artifact of the simulations or either if it was a robust result or it depends strongly on details of the model.…”

Section: The Lotka-volterra Competition Model and The Macarthur-levinmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Using simulations it can be shown that all these simplifications do not destroy EN: clumps and gaps for SRA remain in the case of a finite linear niche axis no matter whether the niche is non-periodic (i.e., it has borders), or the species are randomly distributed, or when r, K and σ change from species to species [33]. Indeed LVCNT with heterogeneous species-dependent parameters is able to predict quite well the number of lumps for several different ecosystems [30,31,33,34].…”

Section: The Lotka-volterra Competition Model and The Macarthur-levinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical Mechanics Ideas and Techniques Applied to Selected Problems in Ecology

Fort

2013

Entropy

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Abstract:Ecosystem dynamics provides an interesting arena for the application of a plethora concepts and techniques from statistical mechanics. Here I review three examples corresponding each one to an important problem in ecology. First, I start with an analytical derivation of clumpy patterns for species relative abundances (SRA) empirically observed in several ecological communities involving a high number n of species, a phenomenon which have puzzled ecologists for decades. An interesting point is that this derivation uses results obtained from a statistical mechanics model for ferromagnets. Second, going beyond the mean field approximation, I study the spatial version of a popular ecological model involving just one species representing vegetation. The goal is to address the phenomena of catastrophic shifts-gradual cumulative variations in some control parameter that suddenly lead to an abrupt change in the system-illustrating it by means of the process of desertification of arid lands. The focus is on the aggregation processes and the effects of diffusion that combined lead to the formation of non trivial spatial vegetation patterns. It is shown that different quantities-like the variance, the two-point correlation function and the patchiness-may serve as early warnings for the desertification of arid lands. Remarkably, in the onset of a desertification transition the distribution of vegetation patches exhibits scale invariance typical of many physical systems in the vicinity a phase transition. I comment on similarities of and differences between these catastrophic shifts and paradigmatic thermodynamic phase transitions like the liquid-vapor change of state for a fluid. Third, I analyze the case of many species interacting in space. I choose tropical forests, which are mega-diverse ecosystems that exhibit remarkable dynamics. Therefore these ecosystems represent a research paradigm both for studies of complex systems dynamics as well as to unveil the mechanisms responsible for the assembly of species-rich communities. The more classical equilibrium approaches are compared versus non-equilibrium OPEN ACCESSEntropy 2013, 15 5238 ones and in particular I discuss a recently introduced cellular automaton model in which species compete both locally in physical space and along a niche axis.

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Emergent neutrality drives phytoplankton species coexistence

Cited by 66 publications

References 25 publications

The habitat template of phytoplankton morphology-based functional groups

The habitat template of phytoplankton morphology-based functional groups

Emergent neutrality leads to multimodal species abundance distributions

Statistical Mechanics Ideas and Techniques Applied to Selected Problems in Ecology

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