half read on friday, half on tuesday...

The myth of plant species saturation
Ecology Letters
T. J. Stohlgren and D. T. Barnett and C. S. Jarnevich and C. Flather and J. Kartesz
2008

"In regards to exotic species pattersn in space, we have generally found that: (i) large resource-rich, open, warm, wet areas generally accommodate more exotic species than resource poor, cold, stressed areas, and that area alone is a poor predictor of spiecies richeness; (ii) strong positive relationships exist between exotic species richness and native richness or total cover or biomass; and (iii) heterogeneous areas generally accommodate more exotic species than homogeneous areas."

So basically we can't say that communities will become/are saturated because we can't define a community through space or time and because we can't define saturation through space. Nothing scales! Bah!