Translucent windows: How uncertainty in competitive interactions impacts detection of community pattern
| Autor: | D'Andrea, Rafael, Ostling, Annette, O'Dwyer, James P |
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| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: | |
| Druh dokumentu: | Working Paper |
| DOI: | 10.1111/ele.12946 |
| Popis: | Trait variation and similarity among coexisting species can provide a window into the mechanisms that maintain their coexistence. Recent theoretical explorations suggest that competitive interactions will lead to groups, or clusters, of species with similar traits. However, theoretical predictions typically assume complete knowledge of the map between competition and measured traits. These assumptions limit the plausible application of these patterns for inferring competitive interactions in nature. Here we relax these restrictions and find that the clustering pattern is robust to contributions of unknown or unobserved niche axes. However, it may not be visible unless measured traits are close proxies for niche strategies. We conclude that patterns along single niche axes may reveal properties of interspecific competition in nature, but detecting these patterns requires natural history expertise firmly tying traits to niches. Comment: Main text: 18 pages, 6 figures. Appendices: A-G, 6 supplementary figures. This is the peer reviewed version of the article of the same title which has been accepted for publication at Ecology Letters. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving |
| Databáze: | arXiv |
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