Global ETD Search
Search theses and dissertations gathered from participating repositories worldwide. Every result links back to the library that holds it. No account is needed.
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Showing 1 to 20 of 21 for “"metacommunity"”.
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Species richness and metacommunity dynamics in bryophytes
… of island biogeography theory. From the four metacommunity perspectives (Leibold et al., 2004), only the neutral paradigm was not observed. This suggested that an amalgamation of metacommunity paradigms govern bryophyte species composition on local limestone boulders, with the order of …
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Spatiotemporal Variation in Dispersal as a Driver of Macroinvertebrate Metacommunity Dynamics
… species competition and environmental filtering. Metacommunity theory, however, highlights regional drivers such as dispersal and connectivity as key structuring forces. The mechanisms governing freshwater macroinvertebrates community assemblage have long been studied due these organism's …
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Relative Roles of Environmental Conditions and Riverscape Connectivity On Fish Metacommunity Structure
<p>An understanding of how riverscape connectivity influences species assemblages has been identified as critical for effective conservation management and restoration of fish communities in dendritic river networks. This study investigates the relative roles of abiotic conditions and spatial …
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The role of dispersal networks in structuring biotic communities: A tale of streams and metacommunity theory
Identifying the processes and mechanisms that govern communities of organisms is the main goal of community ecology. Locally operating mechanisms such as environmental filtering, in which the environment determines what species are found in a given location, as well as regional processes such as …
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From metacommunity dynamics to rapid biodiversity assessment: DNA-based approaches expand horizons in both fundamental and applied ecology
… govern the persistence of an ant-plant metacommunity. I first use molecular data to clarify the number of coexisting ant species, and then employ population genetic techniques to investigate dispersal scale and other elements of life-history in the three most common species. Where …
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The Influence of Metacommunity Connectivity and Invasive Species on Diversity and Ecosystem Properties: Invasion, Predation by Native Species, and Genetic Diversity of Propagules
… or regional (i.e., dispersal) scale. Metacommunity ecology, however, provides a framework through which to examine these factors across spatial scales, contributing to a more holistic understanding of properties influencing invasion success. This dissertation employs metacommunity …
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Strong Interactive Species in Metacommunities: The Interaction Between Dispersal and Daphnia magna in Zooplankton Communities
Metacommunity ecology explicitly incorporates processes at multiple spatial scales to explain the assembly and dynamics of a community. In a metacommunity, local communities interact with one another through the dispersal of individuals across a region. As such, metacommunities are molded by two …
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Community ecology of aquatic insects in forested headwater streams in the southern Appalachians
… gradients as filters that organize a metacommunity by locally selecting colonizers with similar functional traits, whereas dispersal assembly emphasizes the importance of source pool characteristics and dispersal limitation in organizing a metacommunity. In this study, I developed a …
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Ecological and evolutionary effects of dispersal on freshwater zooplankton
… habitats. New theories and hypotheses (e.g., metacommunity theory and the Monopolization hypothesis) have been developed to understand better the processes occurring in spatially structured environments and how the movement of individuals among habitats contributes to ecology and evolution at …
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Unravelling abiotic and biotic drivers of biodiversity change in local plant and invertebrate communities after 80 years - a re-visitation study on the Studland peninsula.
… also predicted that the health of the regional metacommunity is of utmost importance in maintaining a healthy local system. I have shown that congruent biodiversity change occurs across diverse plant and insect taxa, and is driven by changes in both abiotic and biotic conditions. These drivers …
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Disentangling the influence of dispersal on community assembly and stability
With the introduction of metacommunity theory, the field of community ecology expanded its scope to include patterns and processes beyond the scale of local communities. Dispersal, or the movement of organisms between sites, can play an influential role in generating patterns of community assembly …
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The Macroecology of Microorganisms: From Pattern to Process
… context-dependent, varying with taxon, regional metacommunity dynamics, or methodological choices. Careful consideration of these factors is therefore required when attempting to understand how microbial communities will respond to future environmental changes.
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Impact of environmental change on ecological communities.
… sea surface temperature gradient. Woodland plant metacommunity structure was demonstrated to be C1ementsian for woodland plants despite experiencing biodiversity loss. Hydrodynamic features were demonstrated to act as meso-sca1e dispersal barriers that limited intertidal invertebrates in tracking …
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Effects of the aquatic to terrestrial habitat ratio on an amphibian predator and its prey
… suggesting a result opposite to traditional metacommunity theory. In Chapter 3, I monitored the population level response of two common prey species, tadpoles of grey tree frogs: <italic>Hyla versicolor</italic>) and Blandchard's cricket frogs: <italic>Acris crepitans</italic>) to the …
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Effects of diversity on community assembly dynamics in newly formed pond communities
… A total of 31 species were recorded in the metacommunity with an average cumulative taxonomic richness ranging from 6.1 to 7.6 species per pool. Dispersal of zooplankton taxa was rapid with 8 taxa dispersing in 7 days, but we found no difference in the number of dispersing propagules based …
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Camera traps as sensor networks for space-time exploration of terrestrial mammal communities
… insightful if future studies were to embrace the metacommunity concept and explain these patterns of species distribution, abundance and interaction at multiple scales of spatio-temporal organisation.
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Metapopulations and metacommunities in dry forest openings in southern Illinois
… had the potential to form a metapopulation, a metacommunity study to examine overall patterns at each site, a seed bank study, and a seed dispersal study. Forest openings were found to be separate habitats from the surrounding forest based upon canopy openness. Approximately 30% of the species …
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Quantitative ecology reveals scale-dependent structural processes of the Antarctic benthos through time
… Formation of Seymour Island and found increasing metacommunity complexity, possibly driven by climate warming, over the 4 million years leading up to the extinction. This study provided valuable context for understanding the sudden impact of the extinction, and the ecological changes that occurred …
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Spatial models of plant diversity and plant functional traits : towards a better understanding of plant community dynamics in fragmented landscapes
… considering the diversity and composition of the metacommunity, prior to implementing conservation measures that aim at increased habitat connectivity. The model predictions derived with the IFM highlight the importance of additional natural habitat for the mitigation of future species …
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Trematode Communities of the Appalachian Stream Snail, Elimia proxima: the Importance of Scale in Parasite Ecology Research
Understanding the ecological processes that impact parasite abundance and distribution is critically important for epidemiology and predicting how infectious disease dynamics may respond to future disturbance. Digenean trematodes (Platyhelminthes: Trematoda) are parasitic flatworms with complex, …
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