Colonization/Establishment: The ability of an organism to start a new population in a novel or uncolonized habitat.

Community invasibility: The ability for a species or population to establish itself and grow in a habitat occupied by a community of different organisms.

Dispersal: The movement of organisms among and within habitats and habitat patches.

Ecological drift: The change of species abundances within a community over time due to stochastic processes.

Environmental filters: The selection of a subset of species that can withstand the abiotic conditions of an environment and determines a community.

Metacommunity: An interconnected community of multiple species that is spread across different habitat patches.

Metapopulation: An interconnected population of one species that is spread across different habitat patches.

Neutral theory in ecology: Simplest model possible for biogeographical patterns of diversity in which all species are first assumed to be equally capable of competing. Neutral drift and random dispersal are main factors that shape community assembly.

Niche theory: The distribution of species due to their n-dimensional hypervolume or the space corresponding to species’ requirements (habitat, environmental conditions, food, etc.). This framework is contrary to the neutral theory and suggests certain species are better suited for particular environments and community assembly processes are deterministic.

Patch dynamics: The interconnectedness of populations and communities across mosaic landscapes composed of heterogeneous patches or habitats. The distribution, size, and interconnectedness of patches have an effect of biodiversity maintenance.

Phenotypic plasticity: The variation of phenotypic traits observed due to differences in environmental conditions. Variation in phenotypic plasticity gives rise to genotype by environment (G×E) interactions.

Priority effects: The occurrence of earlier arrivals to a habitat having an advantage for establishment compared to later arrivals during community assembly.

Reaction norm: Pattern of a genotype’s trait expression across different environments. The slope of the reaction norm gives information regarding how responsive a trait is to environmental variation.

Source-sink dynamics: An aspect of patch dynamics where some high quality patches represent sources of species or populations while other poor-quality patches represent sinks.