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Minimal Community Structure: How Parasitoids Divide Resources
Author(s) -
Naeem Shahid,
Hawkins Bradford A.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.144
H-Index - 294
eISSN - 1939-9170
pISSN - 0012-9658
DOI - 10.2307/1939384
Subject(s) - niche , parasitoid , ecology , abundance (ecology) , breakage , community structure , ecological niche , resource (disambiguation) , niche differentiation , biology , host (biology) , habitat , computer science , computer network , world wide web
Parasitoid communities show patterns in the distribution and abundance of species that fit predictions of niche partitioning models. These models treat community resources as unit volumes and conceptually treat niche partitioning, or resource division, as breakage of this unit into fractions that correlate with proportional densities of the species controlling that fraction of the resource. Unlike many other communities, parasitoid communities are particularly appropriate for applying these models. We examine four types of niche partitioning models employing three types of breakage algorithms. Of these, the overall best—fit model was unidimensional—niche model using a breakage algorithm in which each subsequent break occurred on the smaller or larger fraction at random. Successful fit of these empirically derived, abundance distributions of parasitoid communities to this theoretically derived, expected distribution supports the hypothesis that these communities are minimally structured by a hierarchical process of random niche partitioning along a single resource axis.