Integrating ontogeny and ontogenetic dependency into community assembly

作者：Advyth Ramachandran, Jared D. Huxley, Shane McFaul, Lisa Schauer, Jeff Diez, Rohan Boone, Tesa Madsen‐Hepp, Erin McCann, Janet Franklin, Danielle Logan, Miranda Brooke Rose, Marko J. Spasojevic · 发表于：Journal of Ecology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1111/1365-2745.14132 · 被引用次数：11 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Fire effects on ecosystems、Species Distribution and Climate Change

Abstract Many studies of community assembly focus on a single ontogenetic stage (typically adults) when trying to infer assembly processes from patterns of biodiversity. This focus ignores the finding that assembly mechanisms may strongly differ between life‐stages, and the role of ontogenetic dependency: the mechanisms by which one life stage directly affects the composition of another life stage. Within a 4‐ha forest dynamics plot in California USA, we explored how the relative importance of multiple assembly processes shifts across life stages and assessed ontogenetic dependency of seedlings on adults in woody plant communities. To assess variation in assembly processes across life stages, we examined how β ‐diversity of adult and seedling communities were each influenced by space and 13 environmental variables (soils, topography) using distance‐based redundancy analysis and variation partitioning. We then assessed the ontogenetic dependency of seedlings on adults by including adult composition as a predictor in the seedling community variation partitioning. We found differences between adult and seedling composition. For the adults, we found 18 species including pines, oaks and manzanitas characteristic of this mid‐elevation forest. For seedlings, we found 11 species, and that oaks made up 75% of all seedlings while only making up 45% of all adults. Adult β ‐diversity was primarily explained by space (44.0%) with environment only explaining 18.6% and 37.4% unexplained. In...