ArticleEcology letters2022
Effects of phenotypic variation on consumer coexistence and prey community structure.
Article in Ecology letters, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Coexistence Theory for Microbial Ecology, and Vice Versa.Environmental microbiology · 2025Pooled it
- Eco-evolutionary dynamics and environmental detoxification jointly shape bacterial community response to antibiotic perturbation.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Community state shifts driven by total carbon availability over resource complexity in a synthetic microbial community.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Joint morphological and DNA metabarcoding gut content analysis revealed that adult body size, but not biological sex, influences variance in dietary composition within and among cunner wrasse (BMC marine science · 2026Article
- A soil food web approach to integrate soil fauna into multitrophic biogeochemistry.Communications earth & environment · 2026Review
- Pre-exposure of abundant species to disturbance improves resilience in microbial metacommunities.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Article
- Temporal Changes in the Role of Species Sorting and Evolution Determine Community Dynamics.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- The influence of sample size and sampling design on estimating population-level intra specific trait variation (ITV) along environmental gradients.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Prey selection along a predators' body size gradient evidences the role of different trait-based mechanisms in food web organization.PloS one · 2023Article
- Effects of phenotypic variation on consumer coexistence and prey community structure.Ecology letters · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A popular idea in ecology is that trait variation among individuals from the same species may promote the coexistence of competing species. However, theoretical and empirical tests of this idea have yielded inconsistent findings. We manipulated intraspecific trait diversity in a ciliate competing with a nematode for bacterial prey in experimental microcosms. We found that intraspecific trait variation inverted the original competitive hierarchy to favour the consumer with variable traits, ultimately resulting in competitive exclusion. This competitive outcome was driven by foraging traits (size, speed and directionality) that increased the ciliate's fitness ratio and niche overlap with the nematode. The interplay between consumer trait variation and competition resulted in non-additive cascading effects-mediated through prey defence traits-on prey community assembly. Our results suggest that predicting consumer competitive population dynamics and the assembly of prey communities will require understanding the complexities of trait variation within consumer species.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.