ArticleEcology and evolution2022
A basic community dynamics experiment: Disentangling deterministic and stochastic processes in structuring ecological communities.
Article in Ecology and evolution, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Patterns of Soil Microbial Diversity, Assembly, and Co-Occurrence Along a Natural Salinity Gradient in an Inland Saline-Alkali Wetland.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- Evolution in Response to Management Increases Invasiveness Among Experimental Populations of Duckweed (Evolutionary applications · 2024Article
- A basic community dynamics experiment: Disentangling deterministic and stochastic processes in structuring ecological communities.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Community dynamics are governed by two opposed processes: species sorting, which produces deterministic dynamics leading to an equilibrium state, and ecological drift, which produces stochastic dynamics. Despite a great deal of theoretical and empirical work aiming to demonstrate the predominance of one or the other of these processes, the importance of drift in structuring communities and maintaining species diversity remains contested. Here, we present the results of a basic community dynamics experiment using floating aquatic plants, designed to measure the relative contributions of species sorting and ecological drift to community change over about a dozen generations. We found that species sorting became overwhelmingly dominant as the experiment progressed, and directed communities toward a stable equilibrium state maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection. The dynamics of any particular species depended on how far its initial frequency was from its equilibrium frequency, however, and consequently the balance of sorting and drift varied among species.
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