EEB321H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Relative Species Abundance, Metacommunity, Rank 1
7 Apr 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Lecture 15: neutral theory of biodiversity: can look at how stochasticity might alter biodiversity, stochasticity blurs edges of what"s possible, blurs what we see and how we interpret it. What maintains species diversity: coming back to rank abundance curve, hubbell"s neutral theory: If we start communities where all the species are functionally equivalent (there are no. Goals: neutral theory, how it works, assumptions, predictions. Implications of demographic stochasticity for community dynamics + diversity. What maintains species diversity: hubbell"s" theory is in contrast to general ideas about ecology + evolution. In ecology and evolution start with gausses" experiment looking at idea of competitive exclusion. In one relationship, dashed line goes extinct: these are growth curves of species in competition. Top part of graph: some species persist, when we have complete competitors, can"t coexist. What maintains species diversity: since darwin, hypothesis is that coexistence isn"t possible if spp are too similar.
