Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT Ecological interactions are foundational to our understanding of community composition and function. While interactions are known to change depending on the environmental context, it has generally been assumed that external environmental factors are responsible for driving these dependencies. Here, we derive a theoretical framework which instead focuses on how intrinsic environmental changes caused by the organisms themselves alter interaction values. Our central concept is the ‘instantaneous interaction’, which captures the feedback between the current environmental state and organismal growth, generating spatiotemporal context‐dependencies as organisms modify their environment over time and/or space. We use small microbial communities to illustrate how this framework can predict time‐dependencies in a toxin degradation system, and relate time‐ and spatial‐dependencies in crossfeeding communities. By re‐centring the relationship between organisms and their environment, our framework predicts the variations in interactions wherever intrinsic, organism‐driven environmental change dominates over external drivers.
Source: Ecology Letters
DOI: 10.1111/ele.70027
Authors: Oliver J. Meacock, Sara Mitri
Institutions: University of Sheffield, University of Lausanne
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $5,250
OpenAlex ID: W4405924447