Understanding the mechanisms controlling community diversity, functions, succession, and
biogeography is a central, but poorly understood, topic in ecology, particularly in microbial …

This article reviews the present state of insects, describing their taxonomic position, cost,
and value as well as the threats to their well-being. Insects are an important source of both …

Metacommunity ecology combines local (eg, environmental filtering and biotic interactions)
and regional (eg, dispersal and heterogeneity) processes to understand patterns of species …

Recently, microbiologists have established the existence of biogeographic patterns among a
wide range of microorganisms. The focus of the field is now shifting to identifying the …

Species spatial distributions are the result of population demography, behavioral traits, and
species interactions in spatially heterogeneous environmental conditions. Hence the …

Deterministic theories in community ecology suggest that local, niche-based processes,
such as environmental filtering, biotic interactions and interspecific trade-offs largely …

Aim Beta diversity (variation of the species composition of assemblages) may reflect two
different phenomena, spatial species turnover and nestedness of assemblages, which result …

The existence of biogeographic patterns among most free-living microbial taxa has been
well established, yet little is known about the underlying mechanisms that shape these …

β‐diversity represents the compositional variation among communities from site‐to‐site,
linking local (α‐diversity) and regional (γ‐diversity). Researchers often desire to compare …

Tropical forest vegetation is shaped by climate and by soil, but understanding how the
distributions of individual tree species respond to specific resources has been hindered by …