Biodiversity is declining from unprecedented land conversions that replace diverse, low‐
intensity agriculture with vast expanses under homogeneous, intensive production. Despite …

This pioneering graduate textbook provides readers with the concepts and practical tools
required to understand the maximum entropy principle, and apply it to an understanding of …

Explaining the mechanisms underlying patterns of species diversity and composition in
riverine networks is challenging. Historically, community ecologists have conceived of …

Determining how ecological communities will respond to global environmental change
remains a challenging research problem. Recent meta‐analyses concluded that most …

The diazotrophic community in biological soil crusts (biocrusts) is the key supplier of
nitrogen in dryland. To date, there is still limited information on how biocrust development …

Niche and neutral theories emphasize different processes contributing to the maintenance of
species diversity. In this study, we calculated the local contribution to beta diversity (LCBD) …

Abstract β-diversity usually refers to species turnover along a gradient or changes in species
diversity between communities. It is a key concept in understanding the mechanisms of …

Understanding the influences of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering on the
structure of ecological communities is a major challenge in ecology. Insight may be gained …

Ecological communities are structured by both deterministic, niche‐based processes and
stochastic processes such as dispersal. A pressing issue in ecology is to determine when …

Mountain systems are unique for studying the responses of species distribution and diversity
to environmental changes along elevational gradients. It is well known that free-living …