Università Roma Tre

The course aims to provide the theoretical and practical foundations of animal and plant community ecology and macroecology and to present students with state-of-the-art concepts and methods on the use in ecology of morphological-functional traits measured on species (functional traits), across different trophic levels. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of traits as a generalization tool to understand ecological processes, such as response to environmental gradients (ecological niche), species interactions and community assembly, but also effects on ecosystem functioning and potential as bioindicators of ecosystem services.
- The student will learn the characteristics of animal and plant communities, descriptors to define them, and ways to study them to analyze their structure.
The techniques to quantitatively analyze the relationships between organisms belonging to the same community will be illustrated.
Some null models will be proposed to conduct community simulation analysis, the criteria for choosing the most suitable model and sampling techniques for the groups of organisms analyzed.
- The study of communities and macroecology will be organized in different modules.
(i) Co-occurrence: the co-occurrence module allows for the testing of non-random patterns of species co-occurrence in a presence-absence matrix;
(ii) Macroecology: the study of the partitioning among species of physical space and ecological resources. Macroecological studies consist of the analysis of species-level traits, such as body size, geographic area, and mean abundance, measured at large spatial scales;
(iii) Niche overlap: the study of niche overlap has a long history in community ecology.
Simple theories of similarity limitation and ecological character shift predict that intraspecific and interspecific interactions result in reduced niche overlap of interacting organisms and populations.
Testing this idea with empirical data leads to three questions:
1) what aspects of the niche should be measured?
2) how can niche overlap between species pairs be quantified?
(3) what niche overlap would be expected in the absence of interaction?
(iv) Body size overlap: this module allows us to test unusual patterns in the body sizes of co-occurring species and compare these patterns to those that might be expected in a random assemblage unstructured by interspecific interactions;
(v) Community diversity: species diversity is a central object of study in both basic and applied community ecology.
Two main issues in the study of species diversity will be addressed. The first is how we can quantify the diversity of an assemblage and the second is how we can statistically compare the diversity of two different assemblages;
(vi) Functional groups or guilds: groups of species within a community that share common resources are considered guilds. This module will allow the incorporation of guild structure into community analyses.
- Through laboratory and field simulations, the student will learn the dynamics that determine the organization and structure of selected communities.
- Interactive computer programs for null model analysis in community ecology will be used to test community models with experimental and non-experimental data.
Monte Carlo randomization will be illustrated as an analytical method for comparing real communities with "pseudo-communities" created using various algorithms.
The broad applicability of null models in applied and basic ecology will be illustrated.

Mittelbach, G. G., & McGill, B. J. (2019). Community ecology. Oxford University Press.
Morin, P. J. (2009). Community ecology. John Wiley & Sons.