Combining observational and experimental data to estimate environmental and species drivers of fungal metacommunity dynamics.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the distribution and dynamics of species is central to ecology and important for managing biodiversity. The distributions of species in metacommunities are determined by many factors, including environmental conditions and interactions between species. Yet, it is difficult to quantify the effect of species interactions on metacommunity dynamics from observational data. We present an approach to estimate the importance of species interactions that combines data from two observational presence-absence inventories (providing colonization-extinction data) with data from species interaction experiments (providing informative prior distributions in the Bayesian framework). We further illustrate the approach on wood-decay fungi that interact within a downed log through competition f

SUBMITTER: Nenzen HK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11804162 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature