Open Accessmetacom: an R package for the analysis of metacommunity structure
Author(s) -
Dallas Tad
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
ecography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.973
H-Index - 128
eISSN - 1600-0587
pISSN - 0906-7590
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0587.2013.00695.x
Subject(s) - metacommunity , ecology , geography , biology , biological dispersal , sociology , demography , population
Metacommunity theory is an extension of metapopulation theory with the goal of understanding how ecological communities vary through space and time. One off‐shoot of metacommunity theory deals with understanding how community structure varies along biotic or environmental gradients. The Elements of Metacommunity Structure framework is a three‐tiered analysis of metacommunity structure that enables the user to identify metacommunity properties that arise in site‐by‐species incidence matrices. These properties can then be related to underlying variables that influence species distributions. The EMS framework is now implemented in metacom, an open source R package that allows for the analysis and plotting of metacommunities.