TY - JOUR
T1 - Sharp changes in resource availability may induce spatial nearly periodic population abundances
AU - Lampert, Adam
AU - Hastings, Alan
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Arik Yochelis, Mats Gyllenberg, Thomas Schoener and John Hunter for helpful discussions, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript. This research was supported by NSF grant DEB 1009957 to A.H.
PY - 2014/9
Y1 - 2014/9
N2 - For many years, scientists have tried to understand the ubiquitous discrete nature of traits. As the emergence of nonuniform patterns in space via instability of the uniform pattern to spatial perturbations is well-understood in reaction-diffusion systems, several studies have suggested that a similar instability underlies discrete distributions of traits. In contrast, here we suggest that a different mechanism may underly species' discrete distributions of trait values. We show that a point where niche availability changes sharply along the continuous niche axis promotes the discretized distribution of trait values even far from that point. In certain cases, this mechanism may apply also to patterns of population densities over space, such as patterns that were observed in vegetation biomass, as locations where environment changes sharply may promote spatially, nearly periodic stationary patterns.
AB - For many years, scientists have tried to understand the ubiquitous discrete nature of traits. As the emergence of nonuniform patterns in space via instability of the uniform pattern to spatial perturbations is well-understood in reaction-diffusion systems, several studies have suggested that a similar instability underlies discrete distributions of traits. In contrast, here we suggest that a different mechanism may underly species' discrete distributions of trait values. We show that a point where niche availability changes sharply along the continuous niche axis promotes the discretized distribution of trait values even far from that point. In certain cases, this mechanism may apply also to patterns of population densities over space, such as patterns that were observed in vegetation biomass, as locations where environment changes sharply may promote spatially, nearly periodic stationary patterns.
KW - Character displacement
KW - Community assembly
KW - Self-organization
KW - Species packing
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ecocom.2014.05.002
DO - 10.1016/j.ecocom.2014.05.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84902508005
SN - 1476-945X
VL - 19
SP - 80
EP - 83
JO - Ecological Complexity
JF - Ecological Complexity
ER -