coexistence of insect species competing for a pulsed resource toward a unified theory of biodiversity in fluctuating environments昆虫物种的共存竞争脉冲资源波动的环境中对生物多样性的统一理论.pdf

Coexistence of Insect Species Competing for a Pulsed Resource: Toward a Unified Theory of Biodiversity in Fluctuating Environments 1 ´ 1 1 ´ 1 Samuel Venner *, Pierre-Franc¸ois Pelisson , Marie-Claude Bel-Venner , Franc¸ois Debias , Etienne 2 ´ ´ 1 Rajon , Frederic Menu ´ ´ ´ 1 Universite de Lyon, Lyon; Universite Lyon 1; CNRS, UMR5558, Laboratoire de Biometrie et Biologie Evolutive, Villeurbanne, France, 2 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States of America Abstract Background: One major challenge in understanding how biodiversity is organized is finding out whether communities of competing species are shaped exclusively by species-level differences in ecological traits (niche theory), exclusively by random processes (neutral theory of biodiversity), or by both processes simultaneously. Communities of species competing for a pulsed resource are a suitable system for testing these theories: due to marked fluctuations in resource availability, the theories yield very different predictions about the timing of resource use and the synchronization of the population dynamics between the competing species. Accordingly, we explored mechanisms that might promote the local coexistence of phytophagous insects (four sister species of the genus Curculio) competing for oak acorns, a pulsed resource. Methodology/Principal Findings: We analyzed the time partitioning of the exploitation of oak acorns by the four weevil species in two independent communities, and we assessed the level of synchronization in their population dynamics. In accordance with the n