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  • RESEARCH BRIEFINGS

What maintains biodiversity in ecological communities?

An experiment testing two opposing theories about how biodiversity is governed in communities was done at seawall structures at the boundary between high and low tides. Rather than the conventional model, the results support one that suggests that immigration has a larger role in maintaining diversity than do niches.

This is a summary of: Loke, L. H. L. & Chisholm, R. A. Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06161-x (2023).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01669-8

‘Expert opinion’ and the figure are published under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

References

  1. MacArthur, R. H. & Wilson, E. O. Evolution 17, 373–387 (1963).

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  2. MacArthur, R. H. & Wilson, E. O. The Theory of Island Biogeography (Princeton Univ. Press, 1967).

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  3. Chisholm, R. A., Fung, T., Chimalakonda, D. & O’Dwyer, J. P. Proc. R. Soc. B 283, 20160102 (2016).

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  4. Chisholm, R. A. & Fung, T. Theor. Ecol. 15, 1–16 (2022).

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  5. Loke, L. H. L., Chisholm, R. A. & Todd, P. A. Ecology 100, e02757 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

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