The importance of niches for the maintenance of species diversity

@article{Levine2009TheIO,
  title={The importance of niches for the maintenance of species diversity},
  author={Jonathan M. Levine and Janneke HilleRisLambers},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2009},
  volume={461},
  pages={254-257},
  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:1768121}
}
This work uses field-parameterized population models to develop a null expectation for community dynamics without the stabilizing effects of niche differences, and shows that niche differences collectively stabilize the dynamics of experimental communities of serpentine annual plants.
View on Nature
faculty.washington.edu
761 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
20
Background Citations
290
Methods Citations
39
Results Citations
16

761 Citations

Niche and fitness differences relate the maintenance of diversity to ecosystem function.

It is concluded that past inferences about the cause of observed diversity- function relationships may be unreliable, and that new empirical estimates of niche and relative fitness differences are necessary to uncover the ecological mechanisms responsible for diversity-function relationships.

Studies on diversity and coexistence in an experimental microbial community

Light is shed on different factors affecting the coexistence of species using experimental microbial model systems consisting of a bacterivorous ciliate as the predator and two bacteria strains as prey organism, and phenotypic plasticity of one species within a microbial one-predator-two-prey food web enlarges the range of possible coexistence under different dynamic conditions.

An excess of niche differences maximizes ecosystem functioning

It is found that complementarity effects positively correlate with niche differences and selection effects differences correlate with fitness differences, however, niche differences also contribute to selection effects and fitness differences to complementity effects.

Potential mechanisms of coexistence in closely related forbs

Though this study did not quantify long-term stabilization of coexisting populations of these species, results are consistent with expectations for stable coexistence of similar species via a spatial storage effect allowing niche differences to overcome even small (to absent) competitive ability differences.

Coexistence of perennial plants: an embarrassment of niches.

The results show an 'excess' of niche differences: stabilizing mechanisms were not only strong enough to maintain diversity but were much stronger than necessary given the small fitness differences.

Coexistence, niches and biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning.

A resource-based included-niche model in which plant species have asymmetric access to a nested set of belowground resource pools is developed, showing that positive complementarity effects arise from stabilising niche differences, but do not necessarily lead to stable coexistence and hence can be transient.

Species richness increases fitness differences, but does not affect niche differences.

This work presents the first mathematical proof that, for invariant average interaction strengths, the average fitness difference among species increases with richness, while the average niche difference stays constant.

Signature of ecological partitioning in the maintenance of damselfly diversity.

The results suggest that a food web model coupling keystone predation and apparent competition is likely necessary to explain the ecological dynamics of persistence among these genera.

Niche difference determines coexistence and similar underlying processes in four ecological groups

It is shown that niche differences are more important drivers of coexistence than fitness differences, and in all community types negative frequency dependence is the most frequent process.

Experimental evidence for strong stabilizing forces at high functional diversity of aquatic microbial communities.

This work investigated how functional diversity affects the stability of species coexistence and productivity in multispecies communities by characterizing experimentally all pairwise species interactions in a pool of 11 species of eukaryotes belonging to three different functional groups.
...

25 References

Coexistence of the niche and neutral perspectives in community ecology.

It is argued that both evolutionary and ecological processes operate to promote the introduction and to sustain the persistence of ecologically similar and in many cases nearly equivalent species embedded in highly structured food webs.

Ecological Niches: Linking Classical and Contemporary Approaches

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.

Mechanisms of Maintenance of Species Diversity

Stabilizing mechanisms are essential for species coexistence and include traditional mechanisms such as resource partitioning and frequency-dependent predation, as well as mechanisms that depend on fluctuations in population densities and environmental factors in space and time.

Climate variability has a stabilizing effect on the coexistence of prairie grasses

Analysis of three decades of demographic data from a Kansas prairie shows that interannual climate variability promotes the coexistence of three common grass species, suggesting that coexistence based on the storage effect may be underappreciated and could provide an important alternative to recent neutral theories of diversity.

Resource-based niches provide a basis for plant species diversity and dominance in arctic tundra

Evidence is provided from a 15N-tracer field experiment showing that plant species in a nitrogen-limited, arctic tundra community were differentiated in timing, depth and chemical form of nitrogen uptake and that species dominance was strongly correlated with uptake of the most available soil nitrogen forms.

Effects of Temporal Variability on Rare Plant Persistence in Annual Systems

It is concluded that contrary to conventional predictions of conservation and population biology, yearly fluctuations in climate may be essential for the persistence of rare species in invaded habitats.

Resource competition and community structure.

This book builds a mechanistic, resource-based explanation of the structure and functioning of ecological communities and explores such problems as the evolution of "super species," the differences between plant and animal community diversity patterns, and the cause of plant succession.

Coexistence of annual plants: generalist seed predation weakens the storage effect.

It is found that density-dependent predation lowers population densities, and so weakens competition, replacing competition with apparent competition, which does not covary with the environment, reducing the advantage to a species at low density.

The interaction between predation and competition

It is shown, using a comprehensive three-trophic-level model, that competition and predation should be viewed symmetrically: these two interactions are equally able to either limit or promote diversity.

The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography

A study of the issue indicates that it is not a serious problem for neutral theory, and there is sometimes a difference between some of the simulation-based results of Hubbell and the analytical results of Volkov et al. (2003).