Exploring community assembly through an individual-based model for trophic interactions
Authored by Jr Miguel Petrere, Henrique Correa Giacomini, Marco Jr Paulo De
Date Published: 2009
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2008.09.005
Sponsors:
Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq)
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
ODD
Flow charts
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
Traditionally, the dynamics of community assembly has been analyzed by
means of deterministic models of differential equations. Despite the
theoretical advances provided by such models, they are restricted to
questions about community-wide features. The individual-based modeling
offers an opportunity to link bionomic features to patterns at the
community scale, allowing us to understand how trait-based assembly
rules can arise by dynamical processes. The present paper introduces an
individual-based model of community assembly, and discusses some of the
major advantages and drawbacks of this approach. The model was framed to
deal with predation among size-structured populations, incorporating
allometric constraints to energetic requirements, movement, life-history
features and interaction relationships among individuals. A protocol of
assembly procedure is proposed, in which a period of intense species
introductions is followed by a period without introductions. The
resultant communities did not present any pattern of trait
over-dispersion, meaning that the multivariate distances of bionomic
features among co-occurring species were neither larger nor more regular
than expected in a random collection of species. It suggests a weak
influence of interspecific interactions in the model environment and
individualistic rules of coexistence, driven mainly by the spatial
structure. This highlights that trait over-dispersion and resource
partitioning should not be considered a necessary condition for
coexistence, even in communities entirely structured by internal
processes like predation and competition. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All
rights reserved.
Tags
Life-history
Body-size
Food-web structure
Ecological communities
Species interactions
Lake fish communities
Size-structured populations
Competition communities
Intraguild
predation
River floodplain