Understanding the mechanisms that influence and maintain local community species diversity is a central problem in community ecology. Recently, increased awareness of the importance of spatial processes in structuring ecological communities has prompted many researchers to shift their attention from local processes, such as competition and predation, to regional processes, such as dispersal limitation, speciation and extinction. However, considerable debate remains among ecologists concerning the relative importance of regional and local processes in structuring local communities. To test the importance of a regional process, dispersal, relative to interspecific interactions in structuring local communities, I present the results of laboratory immigration experiments using the well-established Tribolium model system. In these experiments, I manipulate both the immigration regime as well as the strength of interspecific interactions experienced by replicate local communities. The results of the experiments are interpreted in the context of two mathematical models of community structure.
Species 1: Coleoptera Tenebrionidae Tribolium castaneum (red flour beetle)
Species 2: Coleoptera Tenebrionidae Tribolium confusum (confused flour beetle)
Species 3: Coleoptera Tenebrionidae Tribolium destructor
Keywords: community assembly, immigration regime
The ESA 2001 Annual Meeting - 2001: An Entomological Odyssey of ESA