Data from: Interactive effects of disturbance and dispersal on community assembly

The traditional debate on alternative community states has been over whether or not they exist. Studies of community assembly have examined the role of assembly history in driving community divergence, but the context in which assembly history becomes important is a continued topic of interest. In this study, we created communities of bacterivorous ciliated protists in laboratory microcosms and manipulated assembly history, disturbance frequency, and the presence of dispersal among local communities to investigate the mechanisms behind community divergence. Specifically, we sought to understand how the role of assembly history changed in response to disturbance, dispersal, and the combination of the two. Assembly history influenced the identity of the dominant species through priority effects, and dispersal and disturbance showed interactive effects on both alpha and beta diversity. Dispersal increased alpha diversity, but only in the absence of disturbance, and it reduced beta diversity, but not in the presence of low or mixed disturbance. These results demonstrate that the role of assembly history and the strength of priority effects depend on community context, suggesting that understanding the interactions between various factors shaping community assembly is important for understanding how ecological communities are structured.学界关于群落替代状态的传统争论，核心在于这类状态是否真实存在。群落组装相关研究已探讨了组装历史在驱动群落分化中的作用，但组装历史发挥重要作用的具体情境，仍是学界持续关注的研究议题。本研究通过实验室微观生态系统（laboratory microcosms）构建噬细菌纤毛原生生物（bacterivorous ciliated protists）群落，并对群落组装历史、干扰频率以及局域群落间的扩散条件进行操控，以探究群落分化背后的潜在机制。具体而言，本研究旨在明确群落组装历史的作用如何随干扰、扩散以及二者的交互作用发生变化。群落组装历史通过优先效应（priority effects）影响优势物种的组成，而扩散与干扰对α多样性（alpha diversity）和β多样性（beta diversity）均存在交互作用。扩散可提升α多样性，但仅在无干扰的情境下生效；同时扩散会降低β多样性，但在低干扰或混合干扰条件下，这一效应并不显著。本研究结果表明，群落组装历史的作用强度与优先效应的强弱均取决于群落所处的具体情境，这意味着厘清塑造群落组装的各类因子间的交互关系，对于理解生态群落的构建机制至关重要。