▪ Abstract The focus of most ideas on diversity maintenance is species coexistence, which
may be stable or unstable. Stable coexistence can be quantified by the long-term rates at …

The metacommunity concept is an important way to think about linkages between different
spatial scales in ecology. Here we review current understanding about this concept. We first …

The metacommunity concept has the potential to integrate local and regional dynamics
within a general community ecology framework. To this end, the concept must move beyond …

HABITAT destruction is the major cause of species extinctions1–3. Dominant species often
are considered to be free of this threat because they are abundant in the undisturbed …

All organisms, especially terrestrial plants and other sessile species, interact mainly with
their neighbors, but neighborhoods can differ in composition because of dispersal and …

The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics brings together the findings and
ideas of researchers studying such varied systems as marine invertebrate communities; …

The application of microbial co-cultures is now recognized in the fields of biotechnology,
ecology, and medicine. Understanding the biological interactions that govern the …

Predominant frameworks for understanding plant ecology have an aboveground bias that
neglects soil micro-organisms. This is inconsistent with recent work illustrating the …

Stochastic niche theory resolves many of the differences between neutral theory and
classical tradeoff-based niche theories of resource competition and community structure. In …

We present a model of community regulation that incorporates the effects of abiotic
disturbance, predation, competition, and recruitment density. We assume that mobile …