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Ecological Niches: Linking Classical and Contemporary Approaches
Jonathan M. Chase,Mathew A. Leibold +1 more
- 01 Jul 2003
1.3K
TL;DR: Jonathan M. Chase and Mathew A. Leibold argue that the niche is an ideal tool with which to unify disparate research and theoretical approaches in contemporary ecology and develop a framework for understanding niches that is flexible enough to include a variety of small- and large-scale processes.
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Abstract: Why do species live where they live? What determines the abundance and diversity of species in a given area? What role do species play in the functioning of entire ecosystems? All of these questions share a single core concept - the ecological niche. Although the niche concept has fallen into disfavour among ecologists in recent years, Jonathan M. Chase and Mathew A. Leibold argue that the niche is an ideal tool with which to unify disparate research and theoretical approaches in contemporary ecology. Chase and Leibold define the niche as including both what an organism needs from its environment and how that organism's activities shape its environment. Drawing on the theory of consumer-resource interactions, as well as its graphical analysis, they develop a framework for understanding niches that is flexible enough to include a variety of small- and large-scale processes, from resource competition, predation and stress to community structure, biodiversity and ecosystem function. Chase and Leibold's synthetic approach should interest ecologists from a wide range of subdisciplines.
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Citations
Facilitation and the niche: implications for coexistence, range shifts and ecosystem functioning
TL;DR: If facilitated species’ niches expand and become less distinct as a result of habitat amelioration, the forces that maintain diversity and promote coexistence in regions or habitats dominated by the facilitator could be reduced and the sign of the effects of facilitation on populations could be species-specific.
220
Ecological determinism increases with organism size.
Vinicius F. Farjalla,Diane S. Srivastava,Nicholas A. C. Marino,Fernanda Azevedo,Viviane Dib,Paloma M. Lopes,Alexandre S. Rosado,Reinaldo Luiz Bozelli,Francisco de Assis Esteves +8 more
TL;DR: It is concluded that a key niche process, habitat filtering, strengthened with organism size, possibly because larger organisms are both less plastic in their fundamental niches and more able to be selective in dispersal.
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Dynamic interactions of life and its landscape : feedbacks at the interface of geomorphology and ecology
TL;DR: Two broad themes that serve to focus and motivate future research are co-evolution of landforms and biological communities; and humans as modi?
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Temporal turnover in the composition of tropical tree communities: functional determinism and phylogenetic stochasticity
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Global change effects on plant communities are magnified by time and the number of global change factors imposed
Kimberly J. Komatsu,Meghan L. Avolio,Nathan P. Lemoine,Forest Isbell,Emily Grman,Gregory R. Houseman,Sally E. Koerner,David Samuel Johnson,Kevin R. Wilcox,Juha M. Alatalo,John P. Anderson,Rien Aerts,Sara G. Baer,Andrew Baldwin,Jonathan D. Bates,Carl Beierkuhnlein,R. Travis Belote,John M. Blair,Juliette M. G. Bloor,Patrick J. Bohlen,Edward W. Bork,Elizabeth H. Boughton,William D. Bowman,Andrea J. Britton,James F. Cahill,Enrique J. Chaneton,Nona R. Chiariello,Jimin Cheng,Scott L. Collins,J. Hans C. Cornelissen,Guozhen Du,Anu Eskelinen,Jennifer Firn,Bryan L. Foster,Laura Gough,Katherine L. Gross,Lauren M. Hallett,Xingguo Han,Harry Harmens,Mark J. Hovenden,Annika K. Jägerbrand,Anke Jentsch,Christel C. Kern,Kari Klanderud,Alan K. Knapp,Juergen Kreyling,Wei Li,Yiqi Luo,Rebecca L. McCulley,Jennie R. McLaren,J. Patrick Megonigal,John W. Morgan,Vladimir G. Onipchenko,Steven C. Pennings,Janet S. Prevéy,Jodi N. Price,Peter B. Reich,Peter B. Reich,Clare H. Robinson,F. Leland Russell,Osvaldo E. Sala,Eric W. Seabloom,Melinda D. Smith,Nadejda A. Soudzilovskaia,Lara Souza,Katherine N. Suding,K. Blake Suttle,Tony J. Svejcar,David Tilman,Pedro M. Tognetti,Roy Turkington,Shannon R. White,Zhuwen Xu,Laura Yahdjian,Qiang Yu,Pengfei Zhang,Pengfei Zhang,Yunhai Zhang,Yunhai Zhang +78 more
TL;DR: An unprecedented global synthesis of over 100 experiments that manipulated factors linked to GCDs shows that herbaceous plant community responses depend on experimental manipulation length and number of factors manipulated, and finds that plant communities are fairly resistant to experimentally manipulated G CDs in the short term.
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David Tilman
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James Robert Brown
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