Temporal effects of disturbance on community composition in simulated stage-structured plant communities
Authored by Youshi Wang, Chengjin Chu, Shujun Wen, M D Farnon Ellwood, Adam D Miller
Date Published: 2018
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.3660
Sponsors:
Chinese National Natural Science Foundation
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
ODD
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
In an era of global environmental change, understanding how disturbance
affects the dynamics of ecological communities is crucial. However, few
studies have theoretically explored the potential influence of
disturbance including both intensity and frequency on compositional
change over time in communities with stage structure. A spatially
explicit, individual-based model was constructed incorporating the
various demographic responses to disturbance of plants at two different
growth stages: seedlings and adults. In the model, we assumed that
individuals within each stage were demographically equivalent (neutral)
but differed between stages. We simulated a common phenomenon that
seedlings suffered more from disturbance such as grazing and fire than
adults. We showed how stage-structured communities of seedlings and
adults responded to disturbance with various levels of disturbance
frequency and intensity. In ``undisturbed{''} simulations, the
relationship between average species abundance (defined here as the
total number of individuals divided by species richness) and community
composition turnover (measured by the Bray-Curtis similarity index) was
asymptotic. However, in strongly ``disturbed{''} simulations with the
between-disturbance intervals greater than one, this relationship became
unimodal. Stage-dependent response to disturbance underlay the above
discrepancy between undisturbed and disturbed communities.
Tags
Individual-based model
models
Diversity
Biodiversity
Mortality
Succession
Frequency
Trees
Hypothesis
Tropical rain-forest
Compositional change
Grid-based model
Neutral
model
Stage structure
Dry forest