Abstract
This paper aims to show the relevance of past ecological records, at centennial to millennial timescales, for community ecological principles and theory, mainly in relation to temporal dynamics and the origin of present-day community patterns. The underlying assumption is that ecological time is a continuum and the ecological understanding of the present biosphere needs inputs from multilevel timescales. In particular, the so-called Q-time, embracing the Quaternary (the last 2.6 million years), is proposed as a key time period to understand present-day patterns and the underlying causal processes, as for example the latitudinal diversity gradient, the relationship between species richness and stability, the equilibrium/non-equilibrium conditions between communities and the environment, the main trends and clues on the origin of present-day species and the communities they form, the community succession under changing environmental conditions, or the nature (individual vs collective) of such biotic responses, among others. In this temporal context, neoecological studies and modeling, based on short-term evidence and calibration/validation data sets, are viewed as an important source for hypotheses to be tested with long-term ecological (i.e., palaeoecological) and molecular phylogenetic studies. The considerations around these topics provide valuable insights to address the potential future state of modern communities under the predicted global change, which would be useful to propose suitable conservation strategies. It is hoped that this paper will promote constructive discussions leading to a more close collaboration between neoecologists and palaeoecologists, in the way towards the natural convergence of both into one single, time-independent, discipline as is (or should be) ecology. As this paper has been conceived for both neo- and palaeoecologists, the message is twofold: to neoecologists, care about time; to palaeoecologists, care about ecology.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Abbreviations
- Ka:
-
Thousand years
- LDG:
-
latitudinal diversity gradient
- LGM:
-
Last Glacial Maximum
- Ma:
-
Million years
References
Ab’Sáber, N. 1982. The paleoclimate and paleoecology of Brazilian Amazônia. In: G. T. Prance (ed.), Biological Diversification in the Tropics. Columbia Univ. Press, New York. pp. 95–104.
Adler, P. B., J. HilleRisLambers and J. M. Levine. 2007. A niche for neutrality. Ecol. Lett. 10:95–104.
Aleixo, A. 2004. Historical diversification of terra-firme forest bird superspecies, a phylogeographic perspective on the role of different hypothesis of Amazonian diversification. Evolution 58:1303–1317.
Anderson-Carpenter, L., J. S. McLachlan, S. T. Jackson, M. Kuch, C. Y. Lumibao and H. N. Poinar. 2011. Ancient DNA from lake sediments: Bridging the gap between paleoecology and genetics. BMC Evol. Biol. 11:30 (https://doi.org/www.biomedcen-tral.com/1471-2148/11/30)
Anthony, N. M., M. Johnson-Bawe, K. Jeffery, S. L. Clifford, K. A. Abernethy, C. E. Tutin, S. A. Lahm, L. J. T. White, J. F. Utley, E. J. Wickings. and M. W. Bruford. 2007. The role of Pleistocene refugia and rivers in shaping gorilla genetic diversity in central Africa. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104:20432– 20436.
Arita, H.T. and E. Vázquez-Domínguez. 2008. The tropics, cradle, museum or casino? A dynamic null model for latitudinal gradients of species diversity. Ecol. Lett. 11:653–663.
Arkle, R. S., D. S. Pilliod and K. Strickler. 2010. Fire, flow and dynamic equilibrium in stream macroinvertebrate communities. Freshw. Biol. 55:299–314.
Ashcroft, M. B., J. R. Gollan, D. I. Warton and D. Ramp. 2012. A novel approach to quantify and locate potential microrefugia using topoclimate, climate stability, and isolation from the matriz. Glob. Change Biol. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02661.x
Barnosky, A. D., P. L. Koch, R. S. Feranec, S. L. Wing and A. B. Shabel. 2004. Assessing the causes of late Pleistocene extinctions on the continents. Science 396:70–75.
Bascompte, J. 2009. Disentangling the web of life. Science 325:416–419.
Baselga, A. and M. B. Araújo. 2009. Individualistic vs community modelling of species distribution under climate change. Ecography 32:55–65.
Bennett, K. D. 1990. Milankovitch cycles and their effects on species in ecological and evolutionary time. Paleobiology 16:11– 21.
Bennett, K. D. 1997. Evolution and Ecology, the Pace of Life. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge.
Bennett, K. D. and K. J. Willis 2000. Effect of global atmospheric carbon dioxide on glacial-interglacial vegetation change. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 9:355–361.
Birks, H. J. B. 1980. The present flora and vegetation of the moraines of the Klutlan Glacier, Yukon Territory, Canada: a study in plant succession. Quat. Res. 14:60–86.
Birks, H. J. B. 1989. Holocene isochrone maps and patterns of tree-spreading in the British Isles. J. Biogeogr. 16:503–540.
Birks, H. J. B. 1993. Quaternary paleoecology and vegetation science – current contributions and possible future developments. Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 79:153–177.
Birks, H. J. B. and H. H. Birks. 1980. Quaternary Palaeoecology. Edward Arnold, London.
Birks, H. J. B. and H. H. Birks 2008. Biological responses to rapid climate change at the Younger Dryas-Holocene transition at Krĺkenes, western Norway. The Holocene 18:19–30.
Birks, H. J. B. and K. J. Willis. 2008. Alpines, trees, and refugia in Europe. Plant Ecol. Div. 1:147–160.
Birks, H. J. B., O. Heiri, H. Seppä and A. E. Bjune. 2010. Strengths and weaknesses of quantitative climate reconstructions based on late-Quaternary biological proxies. Open Ecol. J. 3:68–110.
Brewer, S., R. Cheddadi, J. L. de Beaulieu and M. Reille. 2002. The spread of deciduous Quercus throughout Europe since the last glacial period. Forest Ecol. Manag. 156:27–48.
Blackburn, T. M. and K. J. Gaston. 1996. A sideways look at patterns in species richness, or why there are so few species outside the tropics. Biodiv. Lett. 3:44–353.
Bradley, R. S., K. Alverson and T. F. Pedersen. 2003. Challenges of a changing Earth, past perspectives, future concerns. In: K. D. Alverson, R. S. Bradley and T. F. Pedersen (eds), Palaeo-climate, Global Change and the Future. Springer, Berlin. pp. 163–167.
Broecker, W. S. 1987. Unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse. Nature 328:123–126.
Brooker, R. W., R. M. Callaway, L. A. Cavieres, Z. Kikvidze, C. J. Lortie, R. Michalet, F. I. Pugnaire, A. Valiente-Banuet, and T. G. Whitham. 2009. Don’t diss integration, a comment on Ricklefs’s Disintegrating Communities. Am. Nat. 174:919–927.
Bush, M. B. 1994. Amazonian speciation, a necessarily complex model. J. Biogeogr. 21:5–17.
Bush, M. B. 1996. Amazonian conservation in a changing world. Biol. Conserv. 76:219–228.
Bush, M. B. 2002. Distributional change and conservation on the Andean flank, a palaeoecological perspective. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 11:463–473.
Bush, M. B. and P. E. De Oliveira. 2006. The rise and fall of the refugial hypothesis of amazonian speciation, a paleoecological perspective. Biota Neotrop. 6 (https://doi.org/www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttextandpid=S1676-06032006000100002)
Bush, M. B. and H. Hooghiemstra. 2005. Tropical biotic responses to climate change. In: T. E. Lovejoy and L. Hannah (eds), Climate Change and Biodiversity. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven. pp. 125–137
Bush, M. B., W. D. Gosling and P. A. Colinvaux. 2007. Climate change in the lowlands of the Amazon basin. In: M. B. Bush and J. R. Flenley (eds), Tropical Rainforest Responses to Climatic Changes. Springer-Praxis, Chichester. pp. 55–76.
Bush, M. B., M. Stute, M.-P. Ledru, H. Behling, P. A. Colinvaux, P. E. De Oliveira, E. C. Grimm, H. Hooghiemstra, S. Haberle, B. W. Leyden, M. L. Salgado-Labouriau and R. Webb. 2001. Paleotemperature estaimates for the lowland Americas between 30oS and 30oN at the Last Glacial Maximum. In: V. Markgraf (ed), Interhemispheric Climate Linkages. Academic Press, San Diego. pp. 293–306.
Carrión, J. S. and S. Fernández. 2009. The survival of the ‘natural potential vegetation’ concept (or the power of tradition). J. Biogeogr. 36:2202–2203.
Cavender-Bares, J., K. H. Kozak, P. V. A. Fine and S. W. Kembel. 2009. The merging of community ecology and phylogenetic biology. Ecol. Lett. 12:693–715.
Chase, J. M. and M. A. Leibold. 2003. Ecological Niches, Linking Classical and Contemporary Approaches. Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Clark, P. U., A. S. Dyke, J. D. Shakum, E. Carlson, J. Clark, B. Wohlfarth, J. X. Mitrovica, S. W. Hostetler and A. M. McCabe. 2009. The last glacial maximum. Science 325:710– 714.
Clements, F. E. 1916. Plant Succession, an Analysis of the Development of Vegetation. Carnegie Institute, Washington.
Cole, K. 2009. Vegetation response to early Holocene warming as an analog for current and future changes. Cons. Biol. 24:29–37.
Colinvaux, P. A. 1998. A new vicariance model for Amazon endemics. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. Lett. 7:95–96.
Colinvaux, P. A. and P. E. De Oliveira. 2001. Amazon plant diversity and climate through the Cenozoic. Palaeogeogr. Palaeo-climat ol. Palaeoecol. 166:51–63.
Colinvaux, P. A., P. E. De Oliveira and M. B. Bush. 2000. Amazonian and neotropical plant communities on glacial time scales, the failure of the aridity and refuge hypotheses. Quat. Sci. Rev. 19:141–169.
Conway, S. 1995. Ecology in deep time. Trends Ecol. Evol. 10:290–294.
Colyvan, M., S. Linquist, W. Grey, P. Griffiths, J. Odenbaugh and H. P. Possingham. 2009. Philosophical issues in ecology, recent trends and future directions. Ecol. Soc. 14, 22 (www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art22/)
Clutton-Brock, T. and B. C. Sheldon. 2010. Individuals and populations, the role of long-term, individual-based studies of animals in ecology and evolutionary biology, Trends Ecol. Evol. 25:562–573.
Crisp, M. D., S. A. Trewick and L. G. Cook. 2011. Hypothesis testing in biogeography. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26: 66–72.
Dalén, L., V. Nyström, C. Valdiosera, M. Germonpré, M. Sablin, E. Turner, A. Angerbjörn, J. L. Arsuaga and A. Götherström. 2007. Ancient DNA reveals lack of postglacial habitat tracking in the arctic fox. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104:6726–6729.
Davis, M. B. 1976. Pleistocene biogeography of temperate deciduous forests. Geosci. Man 13: 13–26.
Davis, M. B. 1981. Quaternary history and the stability of forest communities. In: D. C. West, D. B. Shugart and D. B. Botkin (eds), Forest Succession, Concepts and Applications. Springer, New York. pp. 152–153.
Davis, M. B. 1989. Insights from palaeoecology on global change. Ecol. Soc. Am. Bull. 70:222–228.
Davis, M. B. 1991. Research questions posed by the palaeoecological record of global change. In: R. S. Bradley (ed), Global Changes of the Past. UCAR Office for Interdisciplinary Studies. Univ. Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Office of Interdisciplinary Earth Studies, Boulder. pp. 385–395.
Davis, M. B. and R. G. Shaw. 2001. Range shifts and adaptative responses to Quaternary climatic change. Science 292:673–679.
Delcourt, H. R. and P. A. Delcourt. 1988. Quaternary landscape ecology, relevant scales in space and time. Landsc. Ecol. 2:23– 44.
Delcourt, H. R. and P. A. Delcourt. 1991. Quaternary Ecology: a Paleoecological Perspective. Chapman and Hall, London.
Deng, B. 2010. From energy gradient and natural selection to biodiversity and stability of ecosystems. Open Ecol. J. 3:95–110.
Erwin, D. H. 2009. Climate as a driver of evolutionary change. Curr. Biol. 19:R575–R583.
Fischer, A. G. 1960. Latitudinal variations in organic diversity. Evolution 14:64–81.
Foster, D. R., P. K. Schoonmaker and S. T. A. Pickett. 1990. Insights from paleoecology to community ecology. Trends Ecol. Evol. 5:119–122.
Gibbard, P. L., M. J. Head and M. J. C. Walker. 2010. Formal ratification of the Quaternary System/Period and the Pleistocene Series/Epoch with a base at 2.58 Ma. J. Quat. Sci. 25:96–102.
Gilpin, M. E. and T. J. Case. 1976. Multiple domains of attraction in competition communities. Nature 261:40–42.
Gleason, H. A. 1926. The individualistic concept of the plant association. Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 53:7–26.
Godwin, H. 1956. The History of the British Flora: a Factual Basis for Phytogeography. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge.
Haffer, J. 1969. Speciation in Amazonian forest birds. Science 165:131–137.
Hagerman, S., H. Dowlatabadi, T. Satterfield and T. McDaniels 2010. Expert views of biodiversity conservation in an era of climate change. Glob. Environ. Change 20:192–207.
Hampe, A. and R. J. Petit. 2005. Conserving biodiversity under climate change: the rear edge matters. Ecol. Lett. 8:461–467.
Harrison, S. and H. Connell. 2008. Toward a better understanding of the regional causes of local community richness. Ecol. Lett. 11:969–979.
Hawkins, B. A., J. A. Diniz-Filho, C. A. Jaramillo and S. A. Soeller. 2007. Climate, niche conservatism and the bird diversity gradient. Am. Nat. 170 (suppl 2):S16–27.
Hewitt, G. M. 1999. Post-glacial re-colonization of European biota. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 68:87–112.
Hillebrand, H. 2004. On the generality of the Latitudinal Diversity Gradient. Am. Nat. 163:193–211.
Hinnov, L. A., M. Schulz and P. Yiou. 2002. Interhemispheric space–time attributes of the Dansgaard–Oeschger oscillations between 100 and 0 ka. Quat. Sci. Rev. 21:1213–1228.
Hofreiter, M., M. Collins and J. R. Stewart. 2012. Ancient biomolecules in Quaternary palaeoecology. Quat. Sic. Rev. 33:1– 13.
Holling, C. S. 1973. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 4:1–23.
Holt, R. D. 2005. On the integration of community ecology and evolutionary biology, historical perspectives and current propects. In: B. Beisner and K. Cuddington (eds), Ecological Paradigms Lost, Routes of Theory Change. Academic Press, San Diego. pp. 235–271.
Hoorn, C., F. P. Wesselingh, H. ter Steege, M. A. Bermudez, A. Mora, J. Sevink, I. Sanmartín, A. Sanchez-Meseguer, C. L. Anderson, J. P. Figueiredo, C. Jaramillo, D. Riff, F. R. Negri, H. Hooghiemstra, J. Lundberg, T. Stadler, T. Särkinen and A. Antonelli. 2010. Amazonia through time, Andean uplift, climate change, landscape evolution, and biodiversity. Science 330:927–931.
Hope, G. S. 1994. Quaternary vegetation. In: R. S. Hill (ed.), History of the Australian Vegetation, Cretaceous to Recent. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge. pp. 368–389.
Hubbell, S. P. 2001. The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography. Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton.
Hubbell, S. P. 2005. Neutral theory in community ecology and the hypothesis of community equivalence. Funct. Ecol. 19:166–172.
Hunter, M. L., G. L. Jacobson and T. Webb. 1988. Paleoecology and the coarse-filter approcah to maintaining biological diversity. Cons. Biol. 2:375–385.
Huntley, B. 1996. Quaternary palaeoecology and ecology. Quat. Sci. Rev. 15:591–606.
Huntley, B. and H. J. B. Birks. 1983. An Atlas of Past and Present Pollen Maps for Europe, 0-13000 years ago. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge.
Hutchinson, G. E. 1965. The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven.
IUCN. 2001. IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria , Version 3.1. IUCN Species Survival Commission. IUCN, Gland.
Ives, A. R. 2005. Communtiy diversity and stability, changing perspectives and changing definitions. In: B. Beisner and K. Cuddington (eds), Ecological Paradigms Lost, Routes of Theory Change. Academic Press, San Diego. pp. 159–182.
Jackson, J. B. C. and D. H. Erwin. 2006. What can we learn about ecology and evolution from the fossil record? Trends Ecol. Evol. 21:322–328.
Jackson, S. T. 2001. Integrating ecological dynamics across time-scales, realtime, Q-time and deep time. Palaios 16:1–2.
Jackson, S. T. and D. F. Sax. 2010. Balancing biodiversity in a changing environment, extinction debt, immigration credit and species turnover. Trends Ecol. Evol. 25:153–160.
Jackson, S. T. and Ch. Weng. 1999. Late Quaternary extinction of a tree species in eastern North America. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96:13847–13852.
Jackson, S. T. and J. W. Williams. 2004. Modern analogs in Quaternary paleoecology: here today, gone yesterday, gone tomorrow. Ann. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 32:495–537.
Jackson, S. T., R. P. Futyma and D. A. Wilcox. 1988. A paleoecological test of a classical hydrosere in the Lake Michigan dunes. Ecology 69:928–936.
Jacobson, G. L. and E. C. Grimm. 1986. A numerical analysis of Holocene forest and prairie vegetation in central Minnesota. Ecology 67:958–966.
Janssens, S. B., E. B. Knox, S. Huysmans, E. F. Smets and V. S. F. T. Merckx. 2009. Rapid radiation of Impatiens (Balsami-naceae) during Pliocene and Pleistocene: Result of a global climate change. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 52:806–824.
Jaramillo, C., M. J. Rueda and G. Mora. 2006. Cenozoic plant diversity in the Neotropics. Science 311:1893–1896.
Jax, K. 2006. Ecological units, definitions and application. Quart. Rev. Biol. 81:237–258.
Johnson, E. A. and K. Miyanishi. 2008. Testing the assumptions of chronosequences in succession. Ecol. Lett. 11:419-431.
Jørgensen, T., K. H. Kjćr, J. Haile, M. Rasmussen, S. Boessenkool, K. Andersen, E. Coissac, P. Taberlet, C. Brochmann, L. Orlando, M. T. P. Gilbert and E. Willerslev. 2011a. Islands in the ice: detecting past vegetation on Greenlandic nunataks using historical records and sedimentaru ancient DNA Meta-barcoding. Mol. Ecol., doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2011.05278.x
Jørgensen, T., J. Haile, P. Möller, A. Andreev, S. Boessenkool, M. Rasmussen, F. Kienast, E. Coissac, P. Taberlet, C. Brochmann, N. H. Bigelow, K. Andersen, L. Orlando, M. T. P. Gilbert and E. Willerslev. 2011b. A comparative study of ancient sedimentary DNA, pollen and macrofossils from permafrost sediments of northern Siberia reveals long-term vegetational stability. Mol. Ecol., doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2011.05287.x
Kelly, C. K., M. W. Chase, A. de Bruijn, M. F. Fay and F. I. Woodward. 2003. Temperature based population segregation in birch. Ecol. Lett. 6:87–89.
Koch, P. L. and A. D. Barnosky. 2006. Late Quaternary exticntions, state of the debate. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 37:215–250.
Lawton, J. H. 1999. Are there general laws in ecology? Oikos 84:177–192.
Lewis, K, S. Epstein, V. G. Godody and S.-H. Hong. 2008. Intact DNA in ancient permafrost. Trends Microbiol. 16:92-94.
Lisiecki, L. E. and M. E. Raymo. 2005. A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic d18O records. Paleo-ceanography 20:1–17.
Loreau, M. 2010. Linking biodiversity and ecosystems, towards a unifying ecological theory. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 365:49–60.
MacLachlan, J. S., J. S. Clark and P. S. Manos. 2005. Molecular indicators of tree migration under rapid climate change. Ecology 86:2088–2098.
Magri, D. 2008. Patterns of post-glacial spread and the extent of glacial refugia of European beech (Fagus sylvatica). J. Biogeogr. 35:450–463.
Magurran, A. E. 2007. Species abundance distributions over time. Ecol. Lett. 10:347–354.
Markgraf, V. and M. McGlone. 2005. South temperate ecosystem responses. In: T. E. Lovejoy and L. Hannah (eds), Climate change and Biodiversity. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven. pp. 142–156.
Markgraf, V., M. McGlone and G. Hope. 1995. Neogene paleoen-vironmental and paleoclimatic change in southern temperate ecosystems - a southern perspective. Trends Ecol. Evol. 10:143–147.
McGill, B. J. 2003. A test of the unified neutral theory of biodiversity. Nature 422:881–885.
McGill, B. J., B. J. Enquist, E. Weiher and M. Westoby. 2006. Rebuilding community ecology from functional traits. Trends Ecol. Evol. 21:178–185.
McGlone, M. S. 1996. When history matters, scale, time, climate and tree diversity. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 5:309–314.
McIntosh, R. P. 1995. H. A. Gleason’s ‘individualistic concept’ and theory of animal communities, a continuing controversy. Biol. Rev. 70:317–357.
Mergeay, J., L. De Meester, H. Eggermont and D. Verschuren. 2011. Priority effects and species sorting in a long paleoe-cological record of repeated community assembly through time. E cology 92:2267–2275.
Mitchell, F. J. G. 2010. Exploring vegetation in the fourth dimension. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26:45–52.
Mittelbach, G. G., D. W. Schemske, H. V. Cornell, A. P. Allen, J. M. Brown,, M. B. Bush, S. P. Harrison, A. H. Hurlbert, N. Knowlton, H. A. Lessios, C. M. McCain, A. R. McCune, L. A. McDade, M. A. McPeek, T. J. Near, T. D. Price, R. E. Ricklefs, K. Roy, D. F. Sax, D. Schluter, J. M. Sobel. and M. Turelli. 2007. Evolution and the latitudinal diversity gradient, speciation, extinction and biogeography. Ecol. Lett. 4:315–331.
Moritz, C., J. L. Paton, C. J. Schneider and T. B. Smith. 2000. Diversification of rainforest faunas, An integrated molecular approach. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 31:533–563.
Moya-Larańo, J. 2010. Can temperature and water availability contribute to the maintenance of latitudinal diversity by increasing the rate of biotic interactions? Open Ecol. J. 3:1–13.
Mullen, S.P., W. K. Savage, N. Wahlberg and K. R. Willmott. 2011. Rapid diversification and not clade age explains high diversity in neotropical Adelpha butterflies. Proc. R. Soc. B 278:1777–1785.
Noonan, B. P. and P. Gaucher. 2005. Phylogeography and demography of Guianan harlequin toads (Atelopus), diversification within a refuge. Mol. Ecol. 14:3017–3031.
Nee, S. and G. Stone. 2003. The end of the beginning for neutral theory. Trends Ecol. Evol. 18:433–434.
O’Dwyer, J. P. and J. L. Green. 2010. Field theory for biogeography, a spatially explicit model for predicting patterns of biodiversity. Ecol. Lett. 13:87–95.
Overpeck, J. 1996. Warm climate surprises. Science 271:1820– 1821.
Pääbo, S., H. Poinar, D. Serre, V. Jaenicke-Despres, J. Hebler, N. Rohland, M. Kuch, J. Krause, L. Vigilant and M. Hofreiter. 2004. Genetic analyses from ancient DNA. Ann. Rev. Genet. 38:645–679.
Palmer, M. W. and P. S. White. 1994. On the existence of ecological communities. J. Veg. Sci. 5:279–282.
Palmer, M. A., R. F. Ambrose. and N. L. Poff. 1997. Ecological theory and community restoration ecology. Restor. Ecol. 5:291–300.
Pearson, R. G. 2006. Climate change and the migration capacity of species. Trends Ecol. Evol. 21:111–113.
Peng, C., J. Guiot, H. Wu, H. Jiang and Y. Luo. 2011. Integrating models with data in ecology and palaeoecology, advances towards a model-data fusion approach. Ecol. Lett. 14:522–536.
Pennington, R. T. and C. W. Dick. 2004. The role of immigrants in the assembly of the South American rainforest tree flora. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 359:1611–1622.
Pennington, R.T., Q. C. B. Cronk and J. A. Richardson. 2004. Introduction and synthesis, plant phylogeny and the origin of major biomes. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 359:1455–1464.
Pennington, R. T., J. E. Richardson and M. Lavin. 2006. Insights into the historical construction of species-rich biomes from dated plant phylogenies, neutral ecological theory and phylo-genetic community structure. New Phytol. 172:605–616.
Plana, V. 2004. Mechanisms and tempo of evolution in the African Guineo-Congolian rainforest. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 359:1585– 1594.
Postigo-Mijarra, J. M., C. Morla, E. Barrón, C. Morales-Molino and S. García. 2010. Patterns of extinction and persistence of Arcotertiary flora in Iberia during the Quaternary. Rev. Pa-laeobot. Palynol. 162:416–426.
Prach, K. and L. R. Walker. 2011. Four opportunities for studies of ecological succession. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26:119–123.
Prance, G. T. 1982. Biological Diversification in the Tropics. Columbia Univ. Press, New York.
Prentice, I. C. 1988. Palaeoecology and plant population dynamics. Trends Ecol. Evol. 3:343–344.
Preston, F. W. 1960. Time and space and the variation of species. Ecology 41:611–627.
Provan, J. and K. D. Bennett. 2008. Phylogeographic insights into cryptic glacial refugia. Trends Ecol. Evol. 23:564–571.
Ricklefs, R. E. 2008. Disintegration of the ecological community. Am. Nat. 172:741–750.
Ricklefs, R. E. 2009. A brief response to Brooker et al.’s comment. Am. Nat. 174:928–931.
Rodríguez, J. P., K. M. Rodríguez-Clark, J. E. M. Baillie, N. Ash, J. Benson, T. Boucher, C. Brown, N. D. Burguess, B. Collen, M. Jennings, D. A. Keith, E. Nicholson, C. Revenga, B. Reyers, M. Rouget, T. Smith, M. Spalding, A. Taber, M. Walpole, I. Zager, T. Zamin. 2010. Establishing IUCN Red List criteria for threatened ecosystems. Cons. Biol. 25:21–29.
Rosenzweig, M. L. 1995. Species Diversity in Space and Time. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge.
Rull, V. 2005. Biotic diversification in the Guayana Highlands, a proposal. J. Biogeogr. 32:921–927.
Rull, V. 2008. Speciation timing and neotropical biodiversity, the Tertiary-Quaternary debate in the light of molecular phyloge-netic evidence. Mol. Ecol. 17:2722–2729.
Rull, V. 2009. Microrefugia. J. Biogeogr. 36:481–484.
Rull, V. 2010. Ecology and palaeoecology, two aproaches, one objective. Open Ecol. J. 3:1–5.
Rull, V. 2011a. Sustainability, capitalism and evolution. EMBO Rep. 12:103–106.
Rull, V. 2011b. Origins of biodiversity. Science 331:398–299.
Rull, V. 2011c. Neotropical biodiversity: timing and potential drivers. Trends Ecol. Evol. 26:508–513.
Rull, V. and T. Vegas-Vilarrúbia. 2011. What is long-term in ecology? Trends Ecol. Evol. 26:3-4.
Salo, J., R. Kalliola, I. Häkkinen, Y. Näkinen, P. Niemelä, M. Puhakka and P. D. Coley. 1986. River dynamics and the diversity of Amazon lowland forest. Nature 322:254-258.
Scherrer, D. and C. Körner. 2011. Topographically controlled thermal-habitat differentiation buffers alpine plant diversity against climate warming. J. Biogeogr. 38:406-416.
Scheiner, S. M. and M. R. Willig. 2008. A general theory of ecology. Theoret. Ecol. 1:21-28.
Schmidt, G. and W. Schröder. 2011. Regionalisation of climate variability used for modelling the dispersal of genetically modified oil seed rape in Northern Germany. Ecol. Ind. 11:951-963.
Schoonmaker, P. K. and D. R. Foster. 1991. Some implications of paleoecology for contemporary ecology. Bot. Rev. 57:204-245.
Shakun, J. D. and A. E. Carlson. 2010. A global perspective on Last Glacial Maximum to Holocene climate change. Quat. Sci. Rev. 29:1801-1816.
Silvertown, J., J. Tallowin, C. Stevens, S. A. Power, V. Morgan, B. Emmett, A. Hester, P. J. Grime, M. Morecroft, R. Buxton, P. Poulton, R. Links and R. Bardgett. 2010. Emvironmental myopia, a diagnosis and a remedy. Trends Ecol. Evol. 25:556-561.
Simberloff, D. 2004. Community ecology, is it time to move on? Am. Nat. 163:787-799.
Snedaker, S. C. 1982. Mangrove species zonation, why? In: D. N. Sen and K. S. Rajpurohit (eds), Tasks for Vegetation Science. Dr. W. Junk Publishers, The Hague. pp. 111–125.
Sommer, R. S. and F. E. Zachos. 2009. Fossil evidence and phylo-geography of temperate species, ‘glacial refugia’ and post-glacial recolonization. J. Biogeogr. 36:2013-2020.
Stott, P. 1998. Biogeography and ecology in crisis, the urgent need for a new language. J. Biogeogr. 25:1-2.
Sublette, N., M. B. Bush and R. van Woesik. 2011. On metapopulations and microrefugia, palaeoecological insights. J. Biogeogr. 38:419-429.
Ter Steege, H. 2010. How neutral is ecology? Biotropica 42:631-633.
Tilman D. 2004. Niche tradeoffs, neutrality, and community structure, a stochastic theory of resource competition, invasion, and community assembly. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101:10854-10861.
Turner, C. and R. G. West. 1968. The subdivision and zonation of interglacial periods. Eiszeitalt. Gegenw. 19:93-101.
Tzedakis, P. C. and K. D. Bennett. 1995. Interglacial vegetation succession: A view from southern Europe. Quat. Sci. Rev. 14:967-982.
Valente, L. M., V. Savolainen and P. Vargas. 2010. Unparalleled rates of species diversification in Europe. Proc. R. Soc. B 277:1489-1496.
Vegas-Vilarrúbia, T., V. Rull, E. Montoya and E. Safont. 2011. Quaternary palaeoecology and nature conservation with an emphasis on global warming and fire, with examples from the Neotropics. Quat. Sci. Rev. 30:2361-2388.
Vellend, M. 2010. Conceptual synthesis in community ecology. Quart. Rev. Biol. 85:183-206.
Vonhof, H. B. and R. J. G. Kaandorp. 2010. Climate variation in Amazonia during the Neogene and the Quaternary. In: C. Hoorn and F. Wesselingh (eds), Amazonia, Landscape and Species Evolution. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. pp. 201–210.
Walker, L. R., D. A. Wardle, R. D. Bardgett and D. B. Clarkson. 2010. The use of chronosequences in studies of ecological succession and soil development. J. Ecol. 98:725-736.
Webb, S. L. 1987. Beech range expansion and vegetation history, pollen stratigraphy of two Wisconsin lakes. Ecology 68:1993-2005.
Weir, J. T. and D. Schluter. 2007. The latitudinal gradient in recent speciation and extinction rates of birds and mammals. Science 315:1574–1576.
Wesselingh, F. P., C. Hoorn, S. B. Kroonenberg, A. Antonelli, J. G. Lundberg, H. B. Vonhof, and H. Hooghiemstra. 2010. On the origin of Amazonian landscapes and biodiversity, a synthesis. In: C. Hoorn and F. Wesselingh (eds.), Amazonia, Landscape and Species Evolution. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. pp. 421–431.
West, R. G. 1964. Inter-relations of ecology and Quaternary paleobotany. J. Ecol. 52 (suppl):47-57.
West, R. G. 1977. Pleistocene Geology and Biology. Longman, London.
West, R. G. 1980. Pleistocene forest history in East Anglia. New Phytol. 85:571-622.
Whitmore, T. C. and G. T. Prance. 1987. Biogeography and Quaternary History in Tropical America. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford.
Whittaker, R. H. 1951. A criticism of the plant association and climatic climax concepts. Northwest Sci. 25:17-31.
Williams, J. W. and S. T. Jackson. 2007. Novel climates, no-analog communities, and ecological surprises. Front. Ecol. Env. 5:475-482.
Williams, J. W., J. L. Blois and B. N. Shuman. 2011. Extrinsic and intrinsic forcing of abrupt ecological change, case studies from the late Quaternary. J. Ecol. 99:664-677.
Willis, K. J. 1993. How old is ancient woodland? Trends Ecol. Evol. 8:427-428.
Willis, K. J. and T. H. van Andel. 2004. Trees or no trees? The environments of central and eastern Europe during the Last Glaciation. Quat. Sci. Rev. 23:2369-2387.
Willis, K. J. and S. Bhagwat. 2009. Biodiversity and climate change. Science 326:806-807.
Willis, K. J. and S. Bhagwat. 2010. Questions of importance to the conservation of biological biodiversity. Clim. Past 6:759-769.
Willis, K. J., M. B. Araújo, K. D. Bennett, B. Figueroa-Rangel, C. A. Froyd and N. Myers. 2007. How can a knowledge of the past help to conserve the future? Biodiversity conservation and the relevance of long-term ecological studies. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 362:175-186.
Willis, K. J., R. M. Bailey, S. A. Bhagwat and H. J. B. Birks. 2010. Biodiversity baselines, thresholds and resilience, testing predictions and assumptions using palaeoecological data. Trends Ecol. Evol. 25:583-591.
Wright, H. E. 1977. Quaternary vegetation history – some comparisons between Europe and America. Ann. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 5:123-158.
Yashina, S., S. Gubin, S. Maksimovich, A. Yashina, E. Gakhova and D. Gilichinsky. 2012. Regeneration of whole fertile plants from 30,000-y-old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1118386109
Zachos, J., M. Pagani, L. Sloan, E. Thomas and K. Billup. 2001. Trends, rhythms and aberrations in climate 65 Ma to present. Science 292:686-693.
Zink, R. M., J. Klicka and B. R. Barber. 2004. The tempo of avian diversification during the Quaternary. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 359:215-220.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
About this article
Cite this article
Rull, V. Community ecology: diversity and dynamics over time. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY 13, 102–116 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1556/ComEc.13.2012.1.13
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1556/ComEc.13.2012.1.13