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  • Perspective
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The spatial scales of species coexistence

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 1, pages 1066–1073 (2017)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 02 August 2017

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Abstract

Understanding how species diversity is maintained is a foundational problem in ecology and an essential requirement for the discipline to be effective as an applied science. Ecologists’ understanding of this problem has rapidly matured, but this has exposed profound uncertainty about the spatial scales required to maintain species diversity. Here we define and develop this frontier by proposing the coexistence–area relationship—a real relationship in nature that can be used to understand the determinants of the scale-dependence of diversity maintenance. The coexistence–area relationship motivates new empirical techniques for addressing important, unresolved problems about the influence of demographic stochasticity, environmental heterogeneity and dispersal on scale-dependent patterns of diversity. In so doing, this framework substantially reframes current approaches to spatial community ecology. Quantifying the spatial scales of species coexistence will permit the next important advance in our understanding of the maintenance of diversity in nature, and should improve the contribution of community ecology to biodiversity conservation.

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Figure 1: The coexistence–area relationship.
Figure 2: Coexistence–area relationships in response to environmental and dispersal scales.
Figure 3: Using the coexistence–area relationship to understand conservation problems.

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Change history

  • 02 August 2017

    An error during production led to a truncation of the final two sentences in the abstract, which should have read ‘In so doing, this framework substantially reframes current approaches to spatial community ecology. Quantifying the spatial scales of species coexistence will permit the next important advance in our understanding of the maintenance of diversity in nature, and should improve the contribution of community ecology to biodiversity conservation.’ These have been corrected in all versions of the Perspective.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Gonzalez for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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  1. Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Universitätstrasse 16, 8092, Zürich, Switzerland

    Simon P. Hart, Jacob Usinowicz & Jonathan M. Levine

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Contributions

S.P.H. and J.M.L. conceived the idea. S.P.H. wrote the paper with all authors contributing revisions. J.U. and S.P.H. developed the model and code for Fig. 2.

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Correspondence to Simon P. Hart.

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Corrected online: Publisher correction 2 August 2017

A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0289-1.

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Supplementary Material 1

Details of model simulations used to generate Fig. 2.

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Hart, S.P., Usinowicz, J. & Levine, J.M. The spatial scales of species coexistence. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 1066–1073 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0230-7

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