Abstract
Community assembly theory suggests that two processes
affect the distribution of trait values within communities:
competition and habitat filtering. Within a local community,
competition leads to ecological differentiation of coexisting
species, while habitat filtering reduces the spread of trait
values, reflecting shared ecological tolerances. Many statistical
tests for the effects of competition exist in the literature, but
measures of habitat filtering are less well-developed. Here, we
present convex hull volume, a construct from computational
geometry, which provides an n-dimensional measure of the volume
of trait space occupied by species in a community. Combined with
ecological null models, this measure offers a useful test for
habitat filtering. We use convex hull volume and a null model to
analyze California woody-plant trait and community data. Our
results show that observed plant communities occupy less trait
space than expected from random assembly, a result consistent
with habi
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1465-1471 |
Journal | Ecology |
State | Published - Jun 2006 |