ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an experimentally-derived community assembly map for a laboratory-constructed freshwater ecosystem that represents a synthesis of a suite of experiments conducted in the authors’ lab to explore various facets of the assembly process. It begins by adopting a general model of community assembly that borrows concepts and terminology from dynamical systems theory. Assembly processes define the attractor landscape through which community development proceeds. The assembly space map presented here represents a synthesis and reanalysis of a series of allied freshwater microcosm experiments that address various questions of community assembly. Ecological communities are complex, self-organized entities whose extent of organization variably depends on environmental factors and local species pools. Multiple species invasions, barriers to dispersal, and stochastic effects combined to generate unique invasion histories associated with each landscape patch. The complex nature of ecological systems makes them difficult subjects of study.
