title: Convergence and divergence in a long-term old-field succession: the importance of spatial scale and species abundance.
abstract: Whether plant communities in a given region converge towards a particular stable state during succession has long been debated, but rarely tested at a sufficiently long time scale. By analysing a 50-year continuous study of post-agricultural secondary succession in New Jersey, USA, we show that the extent of community convergence varies with the spatial scale and species abundance classes. At the larger field scale, abundance-based dissimilarities among communities decreased over time, indicating convergence of dominant species, whereas incidence-based dissimilarities showed little temporal tend, indicating no sign of convergence. In contrast, plots within each field diverged in both species composition and abundance. Abundance-based successional rates decreased over time, whereas rare species and herbaceous plants showed little change in temporal turnover rates. Initial abandonment conditions only influenced community structure early in succession. Overall, our findings provide strong evidence for scale and abundance dependence of stochastic and deterministic processes over old-field succession.
authors.affiliation: School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Shao-Peng
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Biological Sciences, University of Toronto-Scarborough and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M1C 1A4, Canada.|State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China.
authors.forename: Marc W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Cadotte
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, 61920, USA.
authors.forename: Scott J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Meiners
authors.affiliation: School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Zhichao
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Pu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Tadashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fukami
authors.affiliation: School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D058448:Biota; D000072480:Farms; D065948:Grassland; D009515:New Jersey; D010944:Plants / Q000145:classification*; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012621:Seasons
keywords: Beta diversity; Buell-Small Succession Study; community assembly; historical contingency; null model; stochasticity; successional pathways; temporal turnover