Here are some key papers on how disturbance and environmental fluctuations actually affect coexistence. If you’ve liked the earlier posts in this series (or even if you haven’t!) and want to learn more, here’s where to go.
UPDATE: Whoops, hit “publish” before adding the links! Rookie mistake. Fixed now.
General background on modern coexistence theory
Chesson 2000 (Peter Chesson’s most accessible statement of modern coexistence theory, much of which he developed)
Adler et al. 2007 (an even more accessible statement of Chesson’s key ideas)
The best debunking of zombie ideas about how disturbance and environmental change affect coexistence
Chesson and Huntly 1997 (my posts on zombie ideas about the IDH are mostly based on material from this paper)
How disturbance and environmental fluctuations actually affect coexistence
Levins 1979 (a classic; deserves to be much more widely known)
Armstrong and McGehee 1980 (the paper that first discovered the class of coexistence mechanisms known as “relative nonlinearity”)
Chesson 1994 (the single most general and important paper in this section, but also the most technical. Peter Chesson’s most general statement of the class of coexistence mechanisms known as the “storage effect” (although the meaning of that concept has evolved in subtle technical ways over the years). Also includes a general statement of relative nonlinearity. Relative nonlinearity and the storage effect can be shown to be the only classes of mechanisms by which disturbance and environmental fluctuations can affect coexistence.)
Roxburgh et al. 2004 (This paper and the next two show how the storage effect and relative nonlinearity emerge from various specific models of disturbance. Like Chesson and Huntly 1997, this paper and the next two expose standard ideas about the IDH as zombie ideas, although the authors use more measured language than I do)
Yes, great papers! I specially like the one by Chesson 2000 and definitely Levins 1979; I do agree that it deserves to be much more widely known!
Great series of posts! These really helped me integrate the storage effect and relative non-linearity of competition. I had read most of the primary literature, but presenting things so simply and as a function of temporal averages really helped synthesize it all into an easily understandable coherent framework. I will change the way I teach disturbance lead coexistence!
Wow, thanks very much Maria!
Hi Jeremy, just checking, is the Adler 2007 paper “a niche for neutrality?” (link is not working for me, so I googled the Adler lab homepage).
Probably.
Thanks a lot! These series of posts have been really helpful in understanding the basic concepts. I had been struggling with some of the primary literature you mentioned, all day today. Also these posts made me appreciate the mathematical logic/rules required to understand ecology in general.
You’re welcome, glad you found them helpful.