Multiple Mechanisms Required to Predict Grass Community Composition

21476 6 113529 2 342661 document 113529 Ecology Letters - 2026 - Catford - Multiple Mechanisms Required to Predict Grass Community Composition.pdf application/pdf 4703122719f755922cf704fabf3d341f MD5 2074076 2026-04-13 14:26:32 https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/21476/1/Ecology%20Letters%20-%202026%20-%20Catford%20-%20Multiple%20Mechanisms%20Required%20to%20Predict%20Grass%20Community%20Composition.pdf 21476 1 1 application/pdf text en public cc_by_4

Ecology Letters - 2026 - Catford - Multiple Mechanisms Required to Predict Grass Community Composition.pdf

published 113530 1 342667 document 113530 indexcodes.txt text/plain c06b19b38e12d6b899a086292b81a2af MD5 15538 2026-04-13 14:36:23 https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/21476/2/indexcodes.txt 21476 2 2 text/plain other Generate index codes conversion from text to indexcodes en public

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http://eprints.org/relation/isVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/113529 http://eprints.org/relation/isVolatileVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/113529 http://eprints.org/relation/issmallThumbnailVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/113529 archive 353 disk0/00/02/14/76 2026-04-13 14:28:13 2026-04-13 14:28:13 2026-04-13 14:28:13 article show Catford J.A. Graham L. 9309 Shepherd H.E.R. Hauser C.E. Munro N.T. Wintle B.A. Donohue J.G. Tilman D. Clark A.T. Multiple Mechanisms Required to Predict Grass Community Composition pub BNR BEC biodiversity change; community assembly; community ecology theory; grass species; grassland experiment; mechanistic niche model; metacommunity dynamics; plant community composition; quantitative predictions; species coexistence Accurate prediction of community assembly is a central goal in ecology but is challenging because assembly is governed by numerous mechanisms. Few theoretical models explicitly incorporate or test multiple mechanisms at once. We empirically tested the predictive performance of a plant community assembly model built using all possible combinations of four ‘mechanisms’ (soil resource competition, dispersal and colonisation, spatiotemporal niche differentiation, population growth rates) and 11 underlying ‘attributes’ based on measured traits (e.g., fecundity, phenology). The full model accurately predicted out‐of‐sample biomass observations of five grasses sown in mixture along a soil nitrogen gradient (overall R 2 = 0.65). Alternative model variants, parameterised using subsets of the mechanisms and their nested attributes, still retained high explanatory power if the model included at least three of the four mechanisms. Our results suggest that plant community composition is determined by simultaneous effects of multiple mechanisms, and simpler theories have much lower predictive abilities. 2026-04-12 published Wiley-Blackwell doi:10.1111/ele.70358 3168 public Ecology Letters 29 4 e70358 TRUE 1461-0248 info:eu-repo/semantics/article