title: Ecological and evolutionary perspectives on community assembly.
abstract: Ecologists often view community assembly as a process involving the dispersal of species from a static regional species pool followed by environmental filtering to establish the local community. This conceptual framework ignores the dynamic nature of species pools and fails to recognize that communities are assembled by processes operating over a vast range of temporal and spatial scales. Species pool richness and composition are influenced by metacommunity dynamics over short timescales and by speciation, extinction, and dispersal over long timescales. We suggest that a stronger focus on the geography of speciation, the formation of secondary sympatry, and the feedback between local and regional processes is needed to fully understand community assembly and the importance of dynamic species pools.
authors: W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University, Hickory Corners, MI 49060, USA; Department of Zoology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. Electronic address: mittelbach@kbs.msu.edu.
authors: Gary G
authors: GG
authors: Mittelbach
authors: W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University, Hickory Corners, MI 49060, USA; Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
authors: Douglas W
authors: DW
authors: Schemske
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D005075:Biological Evolution; D058448:Biota; D049810:Genetic Speciation; D058974:Phylogeography; D011157:Population Dynamics; D061350:Sympatry
keywords: adaptive radiation; biogeography; community ecology; secondary sympatry; speciation; species interactions