A residence-time framework for biodiversity
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Ecology, Ecosystem Science, Microbiology
- Keywords
- individual based modeling, ecological theory, trait diversity, growth dynamics, life history traits, chemostat theory, emergent properties, ecological constraints, dilution rate, metabolic rate
- Copyright
- © 2017 Locey et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. A residence-time framework for biodiversity. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2727v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2727v2
Abstract
Much of Earth’s biodiversity is at the mercy of currents and physical turnover. Residence time (τ) is the average time that particles spend in a system and is estimated from the ratio of volume to flow rate. Here, we present a framework for how τ influences biodiversity by coupling dispersal and resource supply. We test a suite of predictions with >20,000 individual-based models that impose ecological selection and energetic costs. Altogether, 24 patterns of growth, productivity, abundance, diversity, turnover, commonness and rarity, and trait syndromes simultaneously emerged across six orders of magnitude in τ. Abundance, productivity, and species richness were greatest when dilution rate, i.e., 1/τ, approximated basal metabolic rate. The emergence of τ-based relationships alongside realistic patterns of biodiversity and metabolic scaling suggest that manifold influences of τ, from the individual to ecosystem-levels, are powerful and congruous with ecological paradigms.
Author Comment
This revision includes new analyses, demonstrations that our modeling produces realistic biodiversity patterns, a greater emphasis on metabolic rate, and removal of the phi parameter.