Using long-term data to understand when metacommunities respond to disturbance

Metacommunity ecology considers both the local- and regional-scale factors that shape biodiversity. Previous work has identified dispersal between communities, niche differentiation among species, and habitat heterogeneity as important metacommunity characteristics that determine how ecological communities are assembled and biodiversity is maintained, both locally and regionally. However, it remains unclear if there are combinations of metacommunity properties that confer stability across different types of ecosystems and organisms. By synthesizing biodiversity data from Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) studies that represent diverse ecosystems and organisms, we are beginning to resolve the general relationships between metacommunity parameters and stability.