Leonardo A. Saravia

Leonardo A. Saravia

I am a professor/researcher of biology/ecology at UNGS

Disentangling the Drivers of beta Diversity Along Latitudinal and Elevational Gradients (updated)

1 minute read

Published:

Roughly, this science paper suggest that gamma diversity can explain the latitudinal/altitudinal variations in beta diversity so there is no need to invoke different local assembly mechanisms, they use two extensive data sets (One of them is here ). It seems to me that almost the same thing is formulated in the Hubbell’s neutral theory, local alfa diversity is determined by metacommunity (regional or gamma) diversity so beta diversity will also be determined by gamma diversity. In fact an expression for beta diversity under the neutral model was derived and it was found inconsistent with data. But different measures of beta diversity were used…

Therefore we can use the same dataset to estimate the neutral theory parameters and do simulations to obtain beta diversity (a confidence envelope). If we reject neutral theory,  the same results were obtained previously with other data sets, so we have to discuss why. If we don’t reject neutral theory, maybe that is more interesting, also we have to discuss why.

We can use the methods of:

Estimating Parameters of Neutral Communities: From One Single Large to Several Small Samples. Ecology, 88(10), 2482-2488.

This is an open possibility for collaborations so tell me if you like the idea and want to work with it.

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Percolation and scaling in ecology

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Scaling is a central theme in ecology, well this is my opinion, but there are others that think like me, for example Brian Enquist, that organized a symposium for the 100th anniversary of the Ecological Society of America Scaling in Ecology. He mentioned that two of the most influential papers from ESA were about scaling: Simon Levin The Problem of Pattern and Scale in Ecology and J.H. Brown The Metabolic Theory of Ecology. But why some processes permeate through scales and others do not; scaling is important because it implies something that crosses scales, did you ever heard the phrase: think globally act locally. Our new preprint analyzes what happens when one species percolates through the landscape Read more

Metacommunities or self organization principles

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A protocol towards a general theory of community ecology

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Definitive answers are scarce in biology 1 2 but if we want the advance of ecological knowledge we should reach a point where we have a theory we can trust, and can be used for prediction.

  1. Hubbell SP (2005) Neutral theory in community ecology and the hypothesis of functional equivalence. Funct Ecol 19: 166–172. doi:10.1111/j.0269-8463.2005.00965.x. ↩
  2. http://oikosjournal.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/the-typical-ecological-answer-it-depends/ ↩
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