Association between abundance structure and biodiversity patterns as a signature of deterministic processes

• Applicant: Dr. Farnoush Farahpour, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 445157714

Quantifying the relative importance of neutrality versus selection in the formation of biological assemblages has long been a basic question in evolutionary biology and ecology. We have found a surprising and strong association between abundance structure and diversity patterns of biological communities that may shed light on this open, important question. Our preliminary studies show that this association is linked to the underlying ecological and evolutionary processes. Specifically we showed that a significant abundance- diversity association is a signature of deterministic selective forces while neutral assembly processes cannot generate this pattern. Understanding this association will give us new insights into assembly rules of biological communities and also provide a novel tool to estimate aspects of diversity, e.g. functional diversity, that otherwise are hard to quantify. Here we propose further studies to put our preliminary results on a broader empirical basis, to mechanistically explain the cause of this new association, and to determine the necessary conditions for it to be observed in a population or community.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants