title: Community assembly rules affect the diversity of expanding communities.
abstract: Despite centuries of interest in species range limits, few studies have taken a whole community into consideration. Actually, multiple species may simultaneously respond to environmental changes, for example, global warming, leading a series of dynamical communities toward the advancing front. We investigated multiple species range expansions through the analysis of a two-species dispersion model and simulations of multiple species assemblages regulated by neutral and fecundity-survival trade-offs (FSTs), respectively, and found that species assemblages regulated by different mechanisms would initiate different expanding patterns in geographic ranges in response to environmental changes. The neutral model generally predicts a higher biodiversity near the core of an expanding range, and a lower community similarity compared with a FST model. Without considering the evolution of life history traits, an assortment of the reproduction ability happens at the advancing front under FSTs at the expense of a higher death rate or lower competitive ability. These results emphasize the importance of community assembly rules to the biodiversity maintenance of range expanding communities.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University Lanzhou, 730000, China.
authors.forename: Zechen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University 2005 Songhu Road, Shanghai, 200438, China.
authors.forename: Shurong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhou
keywords: climate change; community similarity; neutral model; range expansion; species richness; trade-off