Habitat templet theory predicts that species inhabiting similar environments converge on their traits.
Competition however has an opposite effect, and communities structured by competition are expected to present trait overdispersion.
Resource limitations are likely to increase competition.
Resource availability is expected to comply with the number of species and the possible strategies. At least this would be true if comparing equally favorable habitats and with similar evolutionary times and regimes of disturbance.
I’d expect that species niche partitioning takes place on abundant resources prior than on rare ones.
I failed to find any work relating habitat templet and resource availability over evolutionary times and their effects on niche partitioning.
Could you please suggest me some references on the topic?
Thanks in advance
Alex
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Please don't forget that the allopatric speciation should occur more often than the sympatric one. During the allopatric speciation, the competition between ecologically similar forms does not occur due the missing of spatial contacts each other. Moreover, many "similar" forms use very different habitats but have similar phenotypes because they have "parallel" niches in different environments (e.g. mantises in terrestrial habitats and Stomatopod shrimps under water). In such cases, it is difficult to say what resources caused ecological differentiation.
Thanks for your answers. Precisely, I am interested on how resource availability and heterogeneity can be an important factor determining partitioning in evolutionary times. In resource poor, and/or homogenous environments, partitioning remains difficult. In this sense Correa & Winemiller 2014 Ecology 95(1)., for example, describe how niche partitioning (or overlap) was affected by resource availability, which indeed is very related to my question. Yet, here aspects like species plasticity, ontogenic changes and/or intraspecific variability play an important role.
I have failed this far to find references linking resource availability (e.g. microhabitat heterogeneity, prey diversity... ) and how these represent opportunity for niche partitioning by different competitors according to different types of habitats. In this sense, I am aware of niche convergence related to similar alpha niches, despite important habitat filtering, but what I am referring is not convergence, but divergence by competition, assuming that species have coevolved together.
Thanks again for your contributions
May be, its would be useful, to look at some phytosociological works related to the so-called "second-order synusies" (German "Synusien 1. Grades"). Some data about the internal structure and forming during successions and phylogenesis of such divisions of plant communities could be useful for you.
The idea that competition should drive overdispersion, and habitat filtering underdispersion of niche traits, has been challenged recently by our better understanding of the limits to competitive coexistence. I'd recommend that you start with Mayfield and Levine in Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 1085–1093.
Maire et al. 2012 (New Phytologist, 196: 497-509) discussed habitat filtering and niche differentiation on species abundance along fertility and disturbance gradient. Maybe look also Kumordzi et al. 2015 (Journal of Vegetation Science, 26:32-45).
Good luck !
Sorry. of course, I would say "Synusien 2. Grades".
To compensate my mistake a little, I found in intgernet a publication about a particular synusie structure in plants. Unfortunately, it is in Russian but with English summary
http://istina.msu.ru/media/publications/article/7ab/c04/7773259/SmirnovaOV_1985_02.pdf
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