Although geneticists and population ecologist have considered in their explanations the importance of both horizontal -interspecific- and vertical -intraspecific- paths for the flow of information, energy or matter among organisms, community ecology and particularly network ecology have been strongly biased towards considering only horizontal effects. In this article our aim is to put on view of ecologists the concepts of vertical and horizontal transfer of disturbance effects in communities, and discuss the relevance of the interplay between both processes for ecological research. We support that incorporating this view into community ecology could be a promising new research avenue, and may improve our understanding about the responses of communities to natural and anthropogenic disturbances.