ecological Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

metacommunity is a set of interacting

communities A community is a Level of analysis, social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place (geography), place, Norm (social), norms, religion, values, Convention (norm), customs, or Identity (social science), identity. Communiti ...

which are linked by the dispersal of multiple, potentially interacting species. The term is derived from the field of

community ecology In ecology, a community is a group or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographical area at the same time, also known as a biocoenosis, biotic community, biological community, ecological community, ...

, which is primarily concerned with patterns of species distribution, abundance and interactions. Metacommunity ecology combines the importance of local factors (environmental conditions, competition, predation) and regional factors (dispersal of individuals, immigration, emigration) to explain patterns of species distributions that happen in different spatial scales. There are four theoretical frameworks, or unifying themes, that each detail specific mechanistic processes useful for predicting empirical community patterns. These are the

patch dynamics Patch dynamics is an ecological perspective that the structure, function, and dynamics of ecological systems can be understood through studying their interactive patches. Patch dynamics, as a term, may also refer to the spatiotemporal changes wi ...

species sorting Species sorting is a mechanism in the metacommunity framework of ecology whereby species distributions and abundances can be related to the environmental or biotic conditions in a particular habitat. The species sorting paradigm describes a system ...

source–sink dynamics Source–sink dynamics is a theoretical model used by ecologists to describe how variation in habitat quality may affect the population growth or decline of organisms. Since quality is likely to vary among patches of habitat, it is important to co ...

(or mass effect) and neutral model frameworks. Patch dynamics models describe

species composition Species richness is the number of different species represented in an community (ecology), ecological community, landscape or region. Species richness is simply a count of species, and it does not take into account the Abundance (ecology), abunda ...

among multiple, identical patches, such as islands. In this framework, species are able to persist on patches through tradeoffs in colonization ability and competitive ability, where less competitive species can disperse to unoccupied patches faster than they go extinct in others. Species sorting models describe variation in abundance and composition within the metacommunity due to individual species responses to environmental heterogeneity, such that certain local conditions may favor certain species and not others. Under this perspective, species are able to persist in patches with suitable environmental conditions resulting in a strong correlation between local species composition and the environment. This model represents the classical theories of the niche-centric era of G. Evelyn Hutchinson and

Robert MacArthur Robert Helmer MacArthur (April 7, 1930 – November 1, 1972) was a Canadian-born American ecologist who made a major impact on many areas of community and population ecology. Early life and education MacArthur was born in Toronto, Ontario, ...

. Source-sink models describe a framework in which dispersal and environmental heterogeneity interact to determine local and regional abundance and composition. This framework is derived from the

metapopulation A metapopulation consists of a group of spatially separated populations of the same species which interact at some level. The term metapopulation was coined by Richard Levins in 1969 to describe a model of population dynamics of insect pests in ...

ecology term describing source–sink dynamics at the population level. High levels of dispersal among habitat patches allows populations to be maintained in environments that are normally outside the species environmental range. Finally, the neutral perspective describes a framework where species are essentially equivalent in their competitive and dispersal abilities, and local and regional composition and abundance is determined primarily by

stochastic Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselv ...

demographic Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as edu ...

processes and dispersal limitation. The neutral perspective was recently popularized by

Stephen P. Hubbell Stephen P. Hubbell (born 17 February 1942) is an American ecologist on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of the unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography (UNTB), which seeks to explain the divers ...

following his groundbreaking work on the unified neutral theory of biodiversity.

References

{{Reflist Ecology