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SUMMARY:Contributed Talk 4: How the coexistence of specialist and generali
 st species is influenced by the size of environmental graining - Mills\, C
  (University of Edinburgh)
DTSTART:20141028T121500Z
DTEND:20141028T123000Z
UID:TALK55740@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mustapha Amrani
DESCRIPTION:Co-authors: Rosalind Allen (University of Edinburgh)\, Richard
  Blythe (University of Edinburgh) \n\nConsider an ecosystem with limited s
 pace. For a specialist species to survive\, there must be enough of its fa
 voured habitat to support itself. If there is a lot of a particular habita
 t\, then necessarily there must be less of another type of habitat.\n\nA c
 entral question in ecology is why so many types of species can coexist in 
 the same place. A popular explanation is niche partitioning\, in which dif
 ferent species adopt different strategies and thus avoid competition. A po
 ssible difference in strategies is to either become a specialist\, which u
 ses one resource very well but cannot use anything else\, or a generalist\
 , which can use many resources\, but less well. Specialist and generalist 
 species coexist in many environments on earth\, but why?\n \nOne possible 
 factor is the size of similar patches that occur in the environment\, whic
 h can also be thought of as the coarseness of environmental grain. Using a
 n agent-based model\, I investigate the effects of grain size on the coexi
 stence of specialists and generalists and show why intermediately sized gr
 aining encourages coexistence and a higher overall species diversity.\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Newton Institute
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