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dc.contributor.author	Ellison, Aaron M.
dc.contributor.author	Baiser, Benjamin H.
dc.contributor.author	Gotelli, Nicholas
dc.contributor.author	Buckley, Hannah L.
dc.date.accessioned	2012-11-08T15:38:11Z
dash.embargo.terms	2013-11-12
dc.date.issued	2012
dc.identifier.citation	Baiser, Benjamin, Hannah L. Buckley, Nicholas J. Gotelli, and Aaron M. Ellison. Forthcoming. Predicting food-web structure with metacommunity models. Oikos 121.	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	0030-1299	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9886299
dc.description.abstract	The metacommunity framework explores the relative influence of local and regional-scale processes in generating diversity patterns across the landscape. Metacommunity models and empirical studies have focused mostly on assemblages of competing organisms within a single trophic level. Studies of multi-trophic metacommunities are predominantly restricted to simplified trophic motifs and rarely consider entire food webs. We tested the ability of the patch-dynamics, species-sorting, mass-effects, and neutral metacommunity models, as well as three hybrid models, to reproduce empirical patterns of food web structure and composition in the complex aquatic food web found in the northern pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea. We used empirical data to determine regional species pools and estimate dispersal probabilities, simulated local food-web dynamics, dispersed species from regional pools into local food webs at rates based on the assumptions of each metacommunity model, and tested their relative fits to empirical data on food-web structure. The species-sorting and patch-dynamics models most accurately reproduced nine food web properties, suggesting that local-scale interactions were important in structuring Sarracenia food webs. However, differences in dispersal abilities were also important in models that accurately reproduced empirical food web properties. Although the models were tested using pitcher-plant food webs, the approach we have developed can be applied to any well-resolved food web for which data are available from multiple locations.	en_US
dc.description.sponsorship	Organismic and Evolutionary Biology	en_US
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US
dc.publisher	Nordic Ecological Society	en_US
dash.license	LAA
dc.subject	disperal	en_US
dc.subject	food web	en_US
dc.subject	metacommunity	en_US
dc.subject	patch dynamics	en_US
dc.subject	pitcher plant	en_US
dc.subject	Sarracenia purpurea	en_US
dc.subject	species sorting	en_US
dc.title	Predicting Food-Web Structure With Metacommunity Models	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article	en_US
dc.description.version	Accepted Manuscript	en_US
dc.relation.journal	Oikos	en_US
dash.depositing.author	Ellison, Aaron M.
dash.embargo.until	2013-11-12

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  Peer reviewed scholarly articles from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University

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