TY - JOUR
AU - PRICE, MARY, V.
AB - Abstract Three attributes of communities—the number, relative abundances, and phenotypic attributes of coexisting species—together define their “structure,” as the term has been used in the literature. Most ecologists have tried to uncover determinants of community structure by analyzing patterns of morphology or resource use, or by experimentally manipulating the species composition or environmental context of communities. Less often used is a mechanistic analysis of processes operating at the level of individuals or populations. I discuss the logical basis for each of these approaches and illustrate their virtues and limitations with examples drawn from work on heteromyid rodents. While pattern analytic and experimental approaches have provided an efficient means of identifying proximate determinants of species number and relative abundance, a mechanistic approach holds more promise for answering questions about the ultimate determinants of phenotypic patterns within communities This content is only available as a PDF. Author notes 1From the Symposium on Mechanistic Approaches to the Study of Natural Communities presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Zoologists, 27–30 December 1983, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. © 1986 by the American Society of Zoologists
TI - Structure of Desert Rodent Communities: A Critical Review of Questions and Approaches
JF - Integrative and Comparative Biology
DO - 10.1093/icb/26.1.39
DA - 1986-02-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/structure-of-desert-rodent-communities-a-critical-review-of-questions-7cs3nssh8I
SP - 39
EP - 49
VL - 26
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -