Eco-evolutionary Model of Rapid Phenotypic Diversification in Species-Rich Communities.

ABSTRACT: Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes -operating at separate timescales- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field experiment has explicitly shown that communities of competing plant species can experience very fast phenotypic diversification, and that this gives rise to enhanced complementarity in resource exploitation and to enlarged ecosystem-level productivity. Here, we build on progress made in recent years in the integration of eco-evolutionary dynamics, and present a computational approach aimed at describing these empirical findings in detail. In particular we model a community of organisms of different but similar species evolving in time through mechanisms of

SUBMITTER: Villa Martin P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5063285 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature