Species Pool Dynamics in Plant Community Ecology
Summary
Species pool dynamics examine the set of species available to colonise and persist within local plant communities, shaped by regional dispersal, evolutionary history and habitat conditions. Central to this framework is the distinction between the habitat-specific species pool and the realised community, with dark diversity denoting those absent species that nonetheless could thrive under local conditions. Processes governing assembly include dispersal limitation, environmental and biotic filtering, stochastic events and historical legacies. Whether local communities reach saturation—where all suitable species from the pool establish—or remain unsaturated influences alpha (within-site) and beta (among-site) diversity patterns. Advances in quantitative methods have enabled more precise estimation of pool size and composition, using co-occurrence metrics, functional traits, species distribution models and Bayesian approaches. Understanding species pool dynamics is crucial for predicting responses to land-use change and climate shifts, guiding restoration by identifying species with the greatest colonisation potential, and informing conservation strategies that seek to maintain both observed and dark diversity.
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Species Pool Dynamics in Plant Community Ecology publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in species pool dynamics in plant community ecology across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Species pool: The set of species that can potentially colonise and persist in a given local community under prevailing environmental conditions.
Dark diversity: The subset of the species pool that is ecologically suitable for a site but is currently absent from observed communities.
Alpha diversity: The richness or diversity of species within a single local community or site.
Beta diversity: The variation in species composition among multiple communities or sites, reflecting turnover or nestedness patterns.
Environmental filtering: The process by which abiotic conditions select for species with traits suited to local habitat characteristics, thereby shaping community composition.
References
- Decomposing dark diversity affinities of species and sites using Bayesian method: What accounts for absences of species at suitable sites?. Methods in Ecology and Evolution (2023).
- Measuring size and composition of species pools: a comparison of dark diversity estimates. Ecology and Evolution (2016).
- Large‐scale dark diversity estimates: new perspectives with combined methods. Ecology and Evolution (2016).
- Deriving site‐specific species pools from large databases. Ecography (2020).
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