Understanding Variation in Environmental Response Across Taxa

Abstract

When studying how a community responds to its environment, it is typically the case that different taxa will respond in different ways. An important challenge for the ecologist is to go deeper (Shipley, From plant traits to vegetation structure: chance and selection in the assembly of ecological communities. Cambridge University Press, 2010; McGill et al., Trends Ecol Evol 21:178–185, 2006), to look for patterns in environmental responses, and, where possible, to capture the mechanisms by which taxa vary in their environmental response (as in Exercise 16.1). What are the main types of response to environmental gradients? Why do taxa differ in their environmental response?