TY - JOUR T1 - Neutrality and the Response of Rare Species to Environmental Variance A1 - Benedetti-Cecchi, Lisandro A1 - Bertocci, Iacopo A1 - Vaselli, Stefano A1 - Maggi, Elena A1 - Bulleri, Fabio Y1 - 2008/07/23 N2 - Neutral models and differential responses of species to environmental heterogeneity offer complementary explanations of species abundance distribution and dynamics. Under what circumstances one model prevails over the other is still a matter of debate. We show that the decay of similarity over time in rocky seashore assemblages of algae and invertebrates sampled over a period of 16 years was consistent with the predictions of a stochastic model of ecological drift at time scales larger than 2 years, but not at time scales between 3 and 24 months when similarity was quantified with an index that reflected changes in abundance of rare species. A field experiment was performed to examine whether assemblages responded neutrally or non-neutrally to changes in temporal variance of disturbance. The experimental results did not reject neutrality, but identified a positive effect of intermediate levels of environmental heterogeneity on the abundance of rare species. This effect translated into a marked decrease in the characteristic time scale of species turnover, highlighting the role of rare species in driving assemblage dynamics in fluctuating environments. JF - PLOS ONE JA - PLOS ONE VL - 3 IS - 7 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0002777 SP - e2777 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002777 ER -