The Ecology Book

190

LOCAL COMMUNITIES

THAT EXCHANGE

COLONISTS

METACOMMUNITIES

O

ne of the limitations

of traditional community

ecology was that it tended

to look at communities purely

locally and take little account of

what happens at different scales

or across different places. Therefore,

over the last few decades, ecologists

have been developing theories of

“meta” communities; the concept

was summed up in 2004 in a key

paper led by American ecologist

Mathew Leibold.

The idea of metacommunities

is linked to that of metapopulations.

While studies of metapopulations

examine the different patches

where populations of the same

species coexist, in metacommunity

IN CONTEXT

KEY FIGURE

Mathew Leibold (1956–)

BEFORE

1917 Arthur Tansley observes

that two species of Galium

plants grow differently in

different soil patches.

1934 Georgy Gause develops

the competitive exclusion

principle stating that two

species competing for the

same key resource cannot

coexist for long.

2001 Stephen Hubbel l’s

“neutral theory” argues that

biodiversity arises at random.

AFTER

2006 Mathew Leibold and

fellow American ecologist

Marcel Holyoak refine and

develop the theory of

metacommunities.

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