Question

Imagine a model metacommunity in which all patches have slightly different compositions of species, and patches are completely unconnected. Which of these measures of species diversity is expected to increase when a small amount of dispersal between patches is allowed?

Group of answer choices

a. α diversity

b. β diversity

c. γ diversity

d. δ diversity

e. None of these

Answer 1

* c. Gamma-diversity.

Analytic theory is presented for a set of equilibrium diversity patterns in networks of communities, facilitating the exploration of parameter space not accessible by simulation.

The properties of a metacommunity are connectivity, size and speciation rate.

Over all metacommunity gamma-diversity which is partitioned into alpha- and beta-components.

The spatial structure can increase gamma-diversity relative to a well-mixed model, even when theta is held constant.

The magnitude of deviations from the well-mixed model and the partitioning into alpha- and beta-diversity is related to the ratio of migration and speciation rates.

Gamma-diversity scales linearly with metacommunity size even as alpha- and beta-diversity scale nonlinearly with size.