RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Biomass-dispersal trade-off and the functional meaning of species diversity
A1 Fernández-Palacios, José María
K1 Biomass-dispersal trade-off
K1 Production–diversity patterns
K1 r–K selection theory
K1 Species diversity
K1 Ecological Boltzmann’s constant
K1 Ecological state equation
K1 patrones diversidad-producción
K1 teoría de selección r-K
K1 diversidad de especies
K1 constante de Boltzmann ecológica
K1 ecuación de estado ecológica
AB Production–diversity patterns lack a single explanation fully integrated in theoretical ecology. An ecologicalstate equation has recently been found for ruderal vegetation. We studied 1649 plots from twenty-nineecological assemblages and analyzed the relationship between diversity, biomass and dispersal lookingfor a pattern across these ecosystems. We found that high biomass and low dispersal values weresignificantly associated with high diversity plots under stationary conditions, and vice versa, involvinga biomass-dispersal trade-off that is coherent with well-established ecological principles. Therefore,energy per plot, estimated as one half of the product of mean individual biomass and mean square dispersalmultiplied by the number of individuals per plot, only reaches its maximum at intermediate levelsof diversity. This explains the well-known humped relationship between production and diversity. Wealso explore why the rest of the diversity–production patterns can be explained starting from disruptionsof this basic pattern. Simultaneously, the product of diversity, biomass and square dispersal is statisticallyequal to the ecological equivalent of the Boltzmann’s constant included in the ecological state equationthat remains valid for all the assemblages explored due to scale variations in the value of the abovementionedconstant. Biomass-dispersal trade-off resembles the principle of equipartition of energy fromthe kinetic theory of gases but in a characteristic way, because the alternative micro-associations ofdispersal-biomass in function of species diversity are not randomly distributed as it happens with thecombinations of molecular mass and velocity in a mixture of gases. Therefore, this distinctive ecologicalfeature should be assumed as one of the main pro-functional gradients or thermodynamic constraintsto avoid chaos and ecological degradation under stationary conditions. Hence, biomass-dispersal tradeoffexplains production–diversity patterns and the ecological state equation in simultaneous agreementwith conventional ecology and physics.
PB Elsevier BV
YR 2013
FD 2013
LK http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/18498
UL http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/18498
LA en
NO Fundación Canaria Rafael Clavijo
DS Repositorio institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
RD 27-dic-2024