The metacommunity concept is an important way to think about linkages between different
spatial scales in ecology. Here we review current understanding about this concept. We first
investigate issues related to its definition as a set of local communities that are linked by
dispersal of multiple potentially interacting species. We then identify four paradigms for
metacommunities: the patch‐dynamic view, the species‐sorting view, the mass effects view
and the neutral view, that each emphasizes different processes of potential importance in …