Ecology

Data from University of Joseph Fourier Provide New Insights into Ecology

  2012 JUL 20 (VerticalNews) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Ecology, Environment & Conservation -- Investigators discuss new findings in Ecology. According to news reporting originating from Grenoble, France, by VerticalNews correspondents, researchers stated "Although abiotic factors, together with dispersal and biotic interactions, are often suggested to explain the distribution of species and their abundances, species distribution models usually focus on abiotic factors only. We propose an integrative framework linking ecological theory, empirical data and statistical models to understand the distribution of species and their abundances together with the underlying community assembly dynamics."

  Our news editors obtained a quote from the research by the authors from the University of Joseph Fourier, "We illustrate our approach with 21 plant species in the French Alps. We show that a spatially nested modelling framework significantly improves the model's performance and that the spatial variations of species presence-absence and abundances are predominantly explained by different factors. We also show that incorporating abiotic, dispersal and biotic factors into the same model bring new insights to our understanding of community assembly."

  According to the news editors, the researchers concluded: "This approach, at the crossroads between community ecology and biogeography, is a promising avenue for a better understanding of species co-existence and biodiversity distribution."

  For more information on this research see: Accounting for dispersal and biotic interactions to disentangle the drivers of species distributions and their abundances. Ecology Letters, 2012;15(6):584-93. Ecology Letters can be contacted at: Blackwell Publishing Inc, 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - www.wiley.com/; Ecology Letters - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1461-0248)

  The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting I. Boulangeat, Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine, UMR CNRS 5553, Universite Joseph Fourier, Grenoble Cedex 9, France.

  Publisher contact information for the journal Ecology Letters is: Blackwell Publishing Inc, 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

  Keywords for this news article include: France, Europe, Ecology, Grenoble.

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