Speaker
Description
The role of phenotypic plasticity in community assembly and promoting and/or hindering coexistence is widely acknowledged but remains poorly understood. The nematode Prisitiounchus pacificus exhibits a case of environmentally-induced phenotypic plasticity in which an adult worm irreversibly develops either a predatory or a non-predatory mouth form. Additionally, the natural lifecycle of P. pacificus and related nematodes involve the assembly of transient communities on the carcass of the Gymnogaster beetles, followed by the dispersal of the nematodes in the environment \cite{Sommer2025Rev}.
We take advantage of the nematode communities emerging on decomposing beetles to construct a range of models, in pursuit of an all-encompassing framework to explore community assembly and dynamics when phenotypic plasticity and predator-prey interactions coincide. On the one hand, we have constructed agent-based models to reconstruct how communities of nematodes assemble in the wild \cite{kalirad2024role}. To complement this approach, we have developed more abstract models - e.g., the ecological graph theory \cite{kalirad2025b} - to investigate general patterns related to the assembly of such communities over ecological and evolutionary timescales. In this contribution, I will discuss the insights and lessons learned and argue that this approach promises a novel natural-history-informed theoretical understanding of some of the most foundational questions in community ecology.
Bibliography
@article{Sommer2025Rev,
author = {Ralf J. Sommer},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jip.2024.108243},
issn = {0022-2011},
journal = {Journal of Invertebrate Pathology},
pages = {108243},
title = {\emph{Pristionchus} -- Beetle associations: Towards a new natural history},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022201124001861},
volume = {209},
year = {2025}}
@article{kalirad2024role,
author = {Kalirad, Ata and Sommer, Ralf J},
journal = {Ecology Letters},
number = {2},
pages = {e14370},
publisher = {Wiley Online Library},
title = {The role of plasticity and stochasticity in coexistence},
volume = {27},
year = {2024},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14370},
url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ele.14370},}
@article{kalirad2025b,
author = {Kalirad, Ata and Sommer, Ralf J.},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.70121},
journal = {Methods in Ecology and Evolution},
number = {n/a},
pages = {1--14},
title = {Ecological graph theory: Simulating competition and coexistence on graphs},
Url = {https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/2041-210X.70121},
volume = {n/a},
year = {2025}}
