RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Predictions of biodiversity are improved by integrating trait-based competition with abiotic filtering
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.07.12.448750
DO 10.1101/2021.07.12.448750
A1 Loïc Chalmandrier
A1 Daniel B. Stouffer
A1 Adam S. T. Purcell
A1 William G. Lee
A1 Andrew J. Tanentzap
A1 Daniel C. Laughlin
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/07/13/2021.07.12.448750.abstract
AB All organisms must simultaneously tolerate the environment and access limiting resources if they are to persist. Otherwise they go extinct. Approaches to understanding environmental tolerance and resource competition have generally been developed independently. Consequently, integrating the factors that determine abiotic tolerance with those that affect competitive interactions to model species abundances and community structure remains an unresolved challenge. This is likely the reason why current models of community assembly do not accurately predict species abundances and dynamics. Here, we introduce a new synthetic framework that models both abiotic tolerance and biotic competition by using functional traits, which are phenotypic attributes that influence organism fitness. First, our framework estimates species carrying capacities that vary along abiotic gradients based on whether the phenotype tolerates the local environment. Second, it estimates pairwise competitive interactions as a function of multidimensional trait differences between species and determines which trait combinations produce the most competitive phenotypes. We demonstrate that our combined approach more than doubles the explained variance of species covers in a wetland community compared to the model of abiotic tolerances alone. Trait-based integration of competitive interactions and abiotic filtering improves our ability to predict species abundances across space, bringing us closer to more accurate predictions of biodiversity structure in a changing world.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.