For examples in marine benthic communities I can suggest: Bertness, Gaines, Hay (eds) 2001. Marine Community Ecology book. There you will find comprehensive information on community structuration. The book is very based on many classic papers on community ecology, particularly those about rocky shores. You will find those "classics" cited many times in the book.

http://www.evolutionary-ecology.com/issues/forthcoming/ar2825.pdf

Viscous populations evolve altruistic programmed aging in ability conflict in a changing environment

I suggest you read this recent publication:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2012.07438.x/abstract

it may also help you to get to the classics...

These are actual reviews with links to the clasics:

Vellend, B. M. 2010. Conceptual Synthesis in Community Ecology. The Quarterly Review of Biology 85:183–206. (pdf)

http://usucommassembly.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/vellend-2010-conceptual-sysnthesis-of-comm-ecol.pdf

Chase, J. M. 2007. Drought mediates the importance of stochastic community assembly. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104:17430–17434. (pdf)

http://usucommassembly.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/chase-2007-drought-mediates-the-import-of-stochase-comm-assembly.pdf

Also, this paper which had published in 1960 cited more than 2300 times: "Community structure, population control, and competition".

Free access provided by JSTOR as below:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2458808

Some suggestions (trying to keep the list to a reasonable length):

Connell, J.H. 1961. The influence of interspecific competition and other factors on the distribution of the barnacle Chthamalus stellatus. Ecology 42:710 - 723.

Connell, J.H. and R.O. Slatyer. 1977. Mechanisms of succession in natural communities and their role in community stability and organization. American Naturalist 111:1119 - 1144.

Denno, R.F., McClure, M.S., and Ott, J.R. 1995. Interspecific interactions in phytophagous insects: competition reexamined and resurrected. Annual review of entomology, 40(1), 297-331.

Hubbell, S.P. 1979. Tree dispersion, abundance, and diversity in a tropical dry forest. Science 203:1299 - 1309.

Janzen, D.H. 1970. Herbivores and the number of tree species in tropical forests. American Naturalist 104:501 - 528.

MacArthur, R. 1960. On the relative abundance of species. American Naturalist 94:25 - 36.

Simberloff, D.S. and E.O. Wilson. 1969. Experimental zoogeography of islands: The colonization of empty islands. Ecology 50:278 - 296.

Watt, A.S. 1947. Pattern and process in the plant community. Journal of Ecology 35:1 - 22.

Whittaker, R.H. 1965. Dominance and diversity in land plant communities. Science 147:250 –260.

Here, the classical literature about assembly rules.

The theory of Island Biogeography (MacArthur and Wilson, 1967), The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Boogeography (Hubbell, 2001), The Niche-Relationships of the California Thrasher (Grinnell, 1917), Concluding Remarks (Hutchinson, 1957), Geographical Ecology: Patterns and distributions of species (MacArthur, 1972), Animal Ecology (Elton, 1927).

See also Cavender-Bares et al. (2006, 2009), about Floridian forests and a review, respectively.

Thanks all the great suggestions. I found this list of suggested papers with summaries

http://online.sfsu.edu/efc/classes/biol862/whelbib.htm

For keystone species I recommend you Paine's work with sea stars.

Paine, R.T. 1969. A note on trophic complexity and community stability. Am. Nat. 103: 91-93.

Hi Silvija,

Thinking of species traits, environment and community structure, , I would suggest those classic ones, and references therein:

Poff N.L. (1997) Landscape filters and species traits:

towards mechanistic understanding and prediction in

stream ecology. Journal of the North American Benthological

Society, 16, 391–409.

Townsend C.R. & Hildrew A.G. (1994) Species traits in

relation to a habitat templet for river systems. Freshwater

Biology, 31, 265–275.

Southwood T.R.E. (1988) Tactics, strategies and templets.

Oikos, 52, 3–18.

Southwood T.R.E. (1977) Habitat, the templet for

ecological strategies? Journal of Animal Ecology, 46,

337–365.

HTH,

Andrés

Chase, J.M. and M.A. Leibold. 2003. Ecological Niches: Linking Classical and Contemporary Approaches. 212p University of Chicago Press.

Menge and Sutherland 1987

Angelini et al 2010

For a start