Macroinvertebrate community assembly on deep-sea wood falls in Monterey Bay is strongly influenced by wood type.

Environmental filtering, including the influence of environmental constraints and biological interactions on species' survival, is known to significantly affect patterns of community assembly in terrestrial ecosystems. However, its role in regulating patterns and processes of community assembly in deep-sea environments is poorly studied. Here we investigated the role of wood characteristics in the assembly of deep-sea wood fall communities.

Multiple processes generate productivity-diversity relationships in experimental wood-fall communities.

Energy availability has long been recognized as a predictor of community structure, and changes in both terrestrial and marine productivity under climate change necessitate a deeper understanding of this relationship. The productivity-diversity relationship (PDR) is well explored in both empirical and theoretical work in ecology, but numerous questions remain. Here, we test four different theories for PDRs (More-Individuals Hypothesis, Resource-Ratio Theory, More Specialization Theory, and the Connectivity-Diversity Hypothesis) with experimental deep-sea wood falls.