Interactions between assembly order and temperature can alter both short- and long-term community composition.

ABSTRACT: Both the order in which species arrive in a community, and environmental conditions, such as temperature, are known to affect community structure. Little is known, however, about the potential for, and occurrence of, interactions between assembly history and the environment. Of particular, interest may be the interaction between temperature and community assembly dynamics, especially in the light of predicted global climatic change and the fundamental processes that are governed, through metabolic rate, by an individual's environmental temperature. We present, to our knowledge, the first experimental exploration of how the influence of assembly history, temperature, and the interaction between the two alters the structure of communities of competitors, using small-scale protist microcosm c

SUBMITTER: Clements CF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3892329 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature