Productivity, niche availability, species richness, and extinction risk: Untangling relationships using individual-based simulations.

ABSTRACT: It has often been suggested that the productivity of an ecosystem affects the number of species that it can support. Despite decades of study, the nature, extent, and underlying mechanisms of this relationship are unclear. One suggested mechanism is the "more individuals" hypothesis (MIH). This proposes that productivity controls the number of individuals in the ecosystem, and that more individuals can be divided into a greater number of species before their population size is sufficiently small for each to be at substantial risk of extinction. Here, we test this hypothesis using REvoSim: an individual-based eco-evolutionary system that simulates the evolution and speciation of populations over geological time, allowing phenomena occurring over timescales that cannot be easily observed in

SUBMITTER: Furness EN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8258231 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature