Metacommunities

Abstract

Just as the dispersal of individuals may link the dynamics of populations in space, the dispersal of species among communities may link local communities into a metacommunity. Four different perspectives characterize how dispersal rates, environmental heterogeneity, and species traits interact to influence diversity in metacommunities. These perspectives are: patch dynamics, species sorting, mass effects, and the neutral perspective. The neutral perspective stands in stark contrast to the other three perspectives in that it assumes that niche differences between species are unimportant and that species are demographically identical in terms of their birth, death, and dispersal rates. Under the neutral perspective, species diversity is maintained by a balance between speciation, extinction, and dispersal. Although neutral theory is incompatible with realistic modes and rates of speciation, it has been enormously influential in focusing our attention on the linkages between species interactions on local scales, and evolutionary and biogeographic processes occurring on large scales.