Bridging Theory and Experiments of Priority Effects

Priority effects play a key role in structuring natural communities, but considerable confusion remains about how they affect different ecological systems. Synthesizing previous studies, we show that this confusion arises because the mechanisms driving priority and the temporal scale at which they operate differ among studies, leading to divergent outcomes in species interactions and biodiversity patterns. We suggest grouping priority effects into two functional categories based on their mechanisms: "frequency-dependent" priority effects that arise from positive frequency dependence, and "trait-dependent" priority effects that arise from time-dependent changes in interacting traits. Through easy quantification of these categories from experiments, we can construct community models representing diverse biological mechanisms and interactions with priority effects, therefore better predicting their consequences across ecosystems.