Unquestionably, the environment shapes the diversity and composition of ecological communities. Understanding environmental impacts on organisms has long occupied ecologists, however recent papers have argued that the traditional concept of an environmental filter that acts independent from biotic processes is difficult to quantify [1], and perhaps not meaningful to understanding community patterns [2]. Two commentaries [3,4] on our recent paper [2] reaffirm the need to consider the interdependence of environmental and biotic processes.