From Plant Traits to Vegetation Structure ：Chance and Selection in the Assembly of Ecological Communities

Publication subTitle ：Chance and Selection in the Assembly of Ecological Communities

Author： Bill Shipley  

Publisher： Cambridge University Press‎

Publication year： 2009

E-ISBN: 9780511654350

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780521117470

Subject： Q948 Plant ecology and plant geography

Keyword： 植物学

Language： ENG

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From Plant Traits to Vegetation Structure

Description

Plant community ecology has traditionally taken a taxonomical approach based on population dynamics. This book contrasts such an approach with a trait-based approach. After reviewing these two approaches, it then explains how models based on the Maximum Entropy Formalism can be used to predict the relative abundance of different species from a potential species pool. Following this it shows how the trait constraints, upon which the model is based, are necessary consequences of natural selection and population dynamics. The final sections of the book extend the discussion to macroecological patterns of species abundance and concludes with some outstanding unresolved questions. Written for advanced undergraduates, graduates and researchers in plant ecology, Bill Shipley demonstrates how a trait-based approach, can explain how the principle of natural selection and quantitative genetics can be combined with maximum entropy methods to explain and predict the structure of plant communities.

Chapter

Cover

Half-title

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Preface

1 Playing with loaded dice

2 Population-based models of community assembly

Modeling goals

Prediction, relative prediction, generality and predictive risk

Conceptual frameworks

Species or traits?

Things or properties of things?

Population-based models of plant community assembly

Lotka-Volterra models of community assembly

Tilman's resource-ratio model

3 Trait-based community ecology

Traits

Habitat descriptors

Environmental gradients

Types of environmental gradients

Sampling

Choosing environmental variables

Empirical studies of environmental gradients describing community-aggregated traits

Environmental filters and assembly rules

Divergence and convergence in trait values

Divergence and convergence in community trajectories during assembly

Trait variation between and within communities

Strengths and weaknesses

4 Modeling trait-based environmental filters: Bayesian statistics, information theory and the Maximum Entropy Formalism

Step 1: Quantifying what we know

5 Community dynamics, natural selection and the origin of community-aggregated traits

A game of dice

A simple neutral model

A non-neutral model

The dynamics of community assembly

Intraspecific versus interspecific trait values

Quantifying natural selection: the Breeder's Equation

Stabilizing or disruptive selection

Back to community dynamics

Genotypes, phenotypes, environments and heritability

Replacing genotype means with species means

Trait plasticity

Components of variance in trait values

Genetic and environmental components of heritability (h2)

Natural selection, community-aggregated traits and the predictive ability of the Maximum Entropy model

Strength of selection versus drift

6 Community assembly during a Mediterranean succession

7 The statistical mechanics of species abundance distributions

8 Epilogue: traits are not enough

References

Index

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