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Intraspecific Density Dependence And A Guild Of Consumers Coexisting On One Resource, Mark A. Mcpeek
Intraspecific Density Dependence And A Guild Of Consumers Coexisting On One Resource, Mark A. Mcpeek
Dartmouth Scholarship
The importance of negative intraspecific density dependence to promoting species coexistence in a community is well accepted. However, such mechanisms are typically omitted from more explicit models of community dynamics. Here I analyze a variation of the Rosenzweig-MacArthur consumer–resource model that includes negative intraspecific density dependence for consumers to explore its effect on the coexistence of multiple consumers feeding on a single resource. This analysis demonstrates that a guild of multiple consumers can easily coexist on a single resource if each limits its own abundance to some degree, and stronger intraspecific density dependence permits a wider variety of consumers to …
On The Evidence For Species Coexistence: A Critique Of The Coexistence Program, Adam M. Siepielski, Mark A. Mcpeek
On The Evidence For Species Coexistence: A Critique Of The Coexistence Program, Adam M. Siepielski, Mark A. Mcpeek
Dartmouth Scholarship
A major challenge in ecology is to understand how the millions of species on Earth are organized into biological communities. Mechanisms promoting coexistence are one such class of organizing processes, which allow multiple species to persist in the same trophic level of a given web of species interactions. If some mechanism promotes the coexistence of two or more species, each species must be able to increase when it is rare and the others are at their typical abundances; this invasibility criterion is fundamental evidence for species coexistence regardless of the mechanism. In an attempt to evaluate the level of empirical …
Coexistence Of The Niche And Neutral Perspectives In Community Ecology, Mathew A. Leibold, Mark A. Mcpeek
Coexistence Of The Niche And Neutral Perspectives In Community Ecology, Mathew A. Leibold, Mark A. Mcpeek
Dartmouth Scholarship
The neutral theory for community structure and biodiversity is dependent on the assumption that species are equivalent to each other in all important ecological respects. We explore what this concept of equivalence means in ecological communities, how such species may arise evolutionarily, and how the possibility of ecological equivalents relates to previous ideas about niche differentiation. We also show that the co-occurrence of ecologically similar or equivalent species is not incompatible with niche theory as has been supposed, because niche relations can sometimes favor coexistence of similar species. We argue that both evolutionary and ecological processes operate to promote the …
The Consequences Of Changing The Top Predator In A Food Web: A Comparative Experimental Approach, Mark A. Mcpeek
The Consequences Of Changing The Top Predator In A Food Web: A Comparative Experimental Approach, Mark A. Mcpeek
Dartmouth Scholarship
Changing the top predator in a food web often results in dramatic changes in species composition at lower trophic levels; many species are extirpated and replaced by new species in the presence of the new top predator. These shifts in species composition also often result in substantial alterations in the strengths of species interactions. However, some species appear to be little affected by these changes that cause species turnover at other positions in the food web. An example of such a difference in species responses is apparent in the distributions of coenagrionid damselflies (Odonata: Zygoptera) among permanent water bodies with …