Document Type
Article
Department/Program
Virginia Institute of Marine Science
Publication Date
2015
Journal
ECOSPHERE
Volume
6
Issue
12
Abstract
A major challenge in global change ecology is to predict the trajectory and magnitude of community change in response to global change drivers (GCDs). Here, we present a new framework that not only increases the predictive power of individual studies, but also allows for synthesis across GCD studies and ecosystems. First, we suggest that by quantifying community dissimilarity of replicates both among and within treatments, we can infer both the magnitude and predictability of community change, respectively. Second, we demonstrate the utility of integrating rank abundance curves with measures of community dissimilarity to understand the species-level dynamics driving community changes and propose a series of testable hypotheses linking changes in rank abundance curves with shifts in community dissimilarity. Finally, we review six case studies that demonstrate how our new conceptual framework can be applied. Overall, we present a new framework for holistically predicting community responses to GCDs that has broad applicability in this era of unprecedented global change and novel environmental conditions.
DOI
10.1890/ES15-00317.1
Keywords
SPECIES-ABUNDANCE DISTRIBUTIONS; BETA-DIVERSITY; ECOSYSTEM PRODUCTIVITY; GRASSLAND RESPONSES; PLANT-COMMUNITIES; ELEVATED CO2; METAANALYSIS; NITROGEN; BIODIVERSITY; CONVERGENCE
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Sponsor
We thank LTER Network Office for funding our working group and the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center for additional funding. We also thank K. Gross, M. Power, M. Smith, T. Fukami, K. Suding, W. Bowman, E. Gasarch and D. Milchunas for helping develop the initial ideas. Lastly, we are grateful to S. Collins and two anonymous reviewers for constructive and thoughtful comments on our manuscript.
Recommended Citation
Avolio, M. L., K. J. La Pierre, G. R. Houseman, S. E. Koerner, E. Grman, F. Isbell, D. S. Johnson, and K. R.Wilcox. 2015. A framework for quantifying the magnitude and variability of community responses to global changedrivers. Ecosphere 6(12):280. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/ES15-00317.1
