Unifying the Study of Biodiversity Across Timescales - What a MESS!

Explore a seminar that introduces a mechanistic model of community assembly rooted in classic island biogeography theory. Learn how this model makes joint predictions of species richness, abundances, genetic diversities, divergences, and trait evolution within the context of phylogenetic diversification. Discover how different data axes capture information at various timescales of assembly and how combining these axes results in finer resolution inference. Examine the simulation-based inferential framework called MESS (massive eco-evolutionary synthesis simulation), which uses supervised machine learning to test competing models of community assembly and evolution and estimate parameters relevant to island assembly and evolution history. Gain insights into reconciling the relative importance of colonization from regional source pools and in situ speciation in biodiversity accumulation across ecological communities.