02500nas a2200157   4500008004100000245012100041210006900162260001200231300001200243490000800255520197300263100002002236700002102256700002202277856004302299       2017                        eng d00aA simulation-based approach to understand how metacommunity characteristics influence emergent biodiversity patterns0 asimulationbased approach to understand how metacommunity charact  c05/2017  a723-7370 v1263 a<p>To understand controls over biodiversity, it is necessary to take a multi-scale approach to understand how local and regional factors a ect the community assembly processes that drive emergent patterns. &nbsp;is need is re ected in the growing use of the metacommunity concept to interpret multi-scale measures of biodiversity, including metrics derived from diversity partitioning (e.g. a, b and g diversity) and variation partitioning (e.g. spatial and environmental components of compositional turnover) techniques. However, studies have shown limited success using these metrics to characterize underlying community assembly dynamics. Here we demonstrate how a metacommunity simulation package (MCSim) can be used to evaluate when and how biodiversity metrics can be used to make inferences about metacommunity characteristics. We examined a wide range of parameter settings representing ecologically relevant scenarios. We used artificial neural networks (ANNs) to assess the sensitivity of diversity and variation partitioning metrics (calculated from simulation outcomes) to metacommunity parameter settings. In the scenarios examined in this study, the niche-neutral gradient strongly in uenced most biodiversity metrics, metacommunity size exhibited a marginal influence over some metrics, and dispersal dynamics only a ected a subset of variation partitioning outcomes. Variation partitioning response curves along the niche-neutral gradient were not monotonic; however, simulation outcomes suggest other biodiversity metrics (e.g. dissimilarity saturation) can be used in combination with variation partitioning metrics to make inferences about metacommunity properties. With the growing availability of archived ecological data, we expect future work will apply simulation-based techniques to better understand links between biodiversity and the metacommunity characteristics that are presumed to control the underlying community assembly processes.</p>1 aSokol, Eric, R.1 aBrown, Bryan, L.1 aBarrett, John, E.  uhttp://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/oik.0369000637nas a2200193   4500008004100000022001300041245008600054210006900140260001200209300001200221490000800233100002000241700002100261700002300282700002400305700002600329700002200355856006600377       2015                        eng d  a0304380000aLinking management to biodiversity in built ponds using metacommunity simulations0 aLinking management to biodiversity in built ponds using metacomm  c01/2015  a36 - 450 v2961 aSokol, Eric, R.1 aBrown, Bryan, L.1 aCarey, Cayelan, C.1 aTornwall, Brett, M.1 aSwan, Christopher, M.1 aBarrett, John, E.  uhttp://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0304380014004918