Linking community and ecosystem dynamics through spatial ecology

Ecology Letters (2011) 14: 313-323 ABSTRACT: Classical approaches to food webs focus on patterns and processes occurring at the community level rather than at the broader ecosystem scale, and often ignore spatial aspects of the dynamics. However, recent research suggests that spatial processes influ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters 2011-03, Vol.14 (3), p.313-323
Main Authors: Massol, François, Gravel, Dominique, Mouquet, Nicolas, Cadotte, Marc W, Fukami, Tadashi, Leibold, Mathew A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Biological and medical sciences
Biota
Community ecology
Complex adaptive system
Conservation
Conservation of Natural Resources
dispersal
Ecology
Ecosystem
Ecosystem studies
Food Chain
Food chains
food web
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General aspects
grain
landscape
metacommunity
metaecosystem
Models, Biological
patch
Synecology
trait
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Summary:Ecology Letters (2011) 14: 313-323 ABSTRACT: Classical approaches to food webs focus on patterns and processes occurring at the community level rather than at the broader ecosystem scale, and often ignore spatial aspects of the dynamics. However, recent research suggests that spatial processes influence both food web and ecosystem dynamics, and has led to the idea of ‘metaecosystems'. However, these processes have been tackled separately by ‘food web metacommunity' ecology, which focuses on the movement of traits, and ‘landscape ecosystem' ecology, which focuses on the movement of materials among ecosystems. Here, we argue that this conceptual gap must be bridged to fully understand ecosystem dynamics because many natural cases demonstrate the existence of interactions between the movements of traits and materials. This unification of concepts can be achieved under the metaecosystem framework, and we present two models that highlight how this framework yields novel insights. We then discuss patches, limiting factors and spatial explicitness as key issues to advance metaecosystem theory. We point out future avenues for research on metaecosystem theory and their potential for application to biological conservation.
ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01588.x