| 1. |
- Dawson, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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A horizon scan of Biogeography
- 2013
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Ingår i: Frontiers of biogeography. - 1948-6596. ; 5:2, s. 130-157
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The opportunity to reflect broadly on the accomplishments, prospects, and reach of a field may present itself relatively infrequently. Each biennial meeting of the International Biogeography Society showcases ideas solicited and developed largely during the preceding year, by individuals or teams from across the breadth of the discipline. Here, we highlight challenges, developments, and opportunities in biogeography from that biennial synthesis. We note the realized and potential impact of rapid data accumulation in several fields, a renaissance for inter disciplinary research, the importance of recognizing the evolution–ecology continuum across spatial and temporal scales and at different taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional levels, and reexploration of classical assumptions and hypotheses using new tools. However, advances are taxonomically and geographically biased, and key theoretical frameworks await tools to handle, or strategies to simplify, the biological complexity seen in empirical systems. Current threats to biodiversity require unprecedented integration of knowledge and development of predictive capacity that may enable biogeography to unite its descriptive and hypothetico deductive branches and establish a greater role within and outside academia.
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| 2. |
- Dawson, Michael N., et al.
(författare)
-
An horizon scan of biogeography
- 2013
-
Ingår i: Frontiers of Biogeography. - : International Biogeography Society. - 1948-6596. ; 5:2, s. 130-157
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The opportunity to reflect broadly on the accomplishments, prospects, and reach of a field may present itself relatively infrequently. Each biennial meeting of the International Biogeography Society showcases ideas solicited and developed largely during the preceding year, by individuals or teams from across the breadth of the discipline. Here, we highlight challenges, developments, and opportunities in biogeography that were summarized at or emerge from that biennial synthesis. We note the realized and potential impact of rapid data accumulation in several fields, a Renaissance for inter-disciplinary research, the importance of recognizing the evolution-ecology continuum across spatial and temporal scales and at different taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional levels, and re-exploration of classical assumptions and hypotheses using new tools. However, advances are taxonomically and geographically biased, key theoretical frameworks await development of tools for handling, or strategies for simplifying, the biological complexity seen in empirical systems. Current threats to biodiversity require unprecedented integration of knowledge and development of predictive capacity that may enable biogeography to unite its descriptive and hypothetico-deductive arms and establish a greater role within and outside academia.
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| 3. |
- Gotzenberger, Lars, et al.
(författare)
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Ecological assembly rules in plant communities-approaches, patterns and prospects
- 2012
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Ingår i: Biological Reviews. - 1464-7931 .- 1469-185X. ; 87:1, s. 111-127
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding how communities of living organisms assemble has been a central question in ecology since the early days of the discipline. Disentangling the different processes involved in community assembly is not only interesting in itself but also crucial for an understanding of how communities will behave under future environmental scenarios. The traditional concept of assembly rules reflects the notion that species do not co-occur randomly but are restricted in their co-occurrence by interspecific competition. This concept can be redefined in a more general framework where the co-occurrence of species is a product of chance, historical patterns of speciation and migration, dispersal, abiotic environmental factors, and biotic interactions, with none of these processes being mutually exclusive. Here we present a survey and meta-analyses of 59 papers that compare observed patterns in plant communities with null models simulating random patterns of species assembly. According to the type of data under study and the different methods that are applied to detect community assembly, we distinguish four main types of approach in the published literature: species co-occurrence, niche limitation, guild proportionality and limiting similarity. Results from our meta-analyses suggest that non-random co-occurrence of plant species is not a widespread phenomenon. However, whether this finding reflects the individualistic nature of plant communities or is caused by methodological shortcomings associated with the studies considered cannot be discerned from the available metadata. We advocate that more thorough surveys be conducted using a set of standardized methods to test for the existence of assembly rules in data sets spanning larger biological and geographical scales than have been considered until now. We underpin this general advice with guidelines that should be considered in future assembly rules research. This will enable us to draw more accurate and general conclusions about the non-random aspect of assembly in plant communities.
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