Facilitation between plants shapes pollination networks

Losapio, Gianalberto; Bascompte, Jordi; Schmid, Bernhard; Michalet, Richard; Neumeyer, Rainer; Castro, Leopoldo; Cerretti, Pierfilippo; Germann, Christoph; Haenni, Jean‐Paul; Klopfstein, Seraina; Ortiz, Javier; Pont, Adrian C.; Rousse, Pascal; Schmid, Jürg; Sommaggio, Daniele; Schöb, Christian

doi:10.1101/161034

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Finally, these results might explain the patchy structure of the examined alpine tundra vegetation because several plant species tended to aggregate more often than expected by chance. Potential underlying mechanisms might be positive feedbacks or facilitation cascades among plant species (Bruno et al., ; Meron, ) as well as increasing pollinator availability among facilitating plants (Losapio et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The assembly of a plant network in alpine vegetation

Losapio

Cruz

Escudero

et al. 2018

J Vegetation Science

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Questions Positive and negative associations among species influence the structure of plant communities. Yet how these plant associations are assembled at the community level is poorly understood. We propose a new approach that combines spatial ecology, network theory and trait‐based ecology to examine the assembly of plant–plant associations at the community level. Location Gemmipass, Swiss Alps. Methods We fully mapped an alpine plant community at the individual plant level, recording both plant coordinates and functional traits for each individual. We identified non‐random species associations using spatial point‐pattern analysis and partialled out the effect of abiotic heterogeneity. We then analysed the plant network structure and used plant traits to predict species associations. Results We identified 36 significant spatial associations between plant species, 34 positive and two negatives. Dominant, stress‐tolerant species such as Dryas octopetala, Linaria alpina and Leontodon montanus were highly connected in the network, whereas rare, water‐ and nutrient‐demanding species such as Saxifraga aizoides, Galium anisophyllon and Thymus praecox were less connected compared to random expectation. The plant network was clustered, meaning that species were overall more connected among each other than expected by chance. Conclusions Positive associations among species characterized the studied plant community. Besides the primary effect of associations of the “foundation” species D. octopetala with other species, these “subordinate” plants were also associated with each other. Our study reveals the assembly of plant communities as driven by positive associations among stress‐tolerant pioneer species, highlighting their role in supporting the cohesiveness of alpine plant communities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The assembly of a plant network in alpine vegetation

Losapio

Cruz

Escudero

et al. 2018

J Vegetation Science

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“…In mesotrophic grasslands, blue flowers are reported to be absent from the most species-poor communities ( Warren and Billington, 2005 ). Generally, co-flowering species increase the flower color complementarity and diversification of a community ( Lázaro et al, 2009 ; de Jager et al, 2011 ; Makino and Yokoyama, 2015 ; Losapio et al, 2017 ). It is thought to be potentially advantageous to stand out from flowers of competitive species ( Makino and Yokoyama, 2015 ) and also from the background against which flowers are viewed ( Bukovac et al, 2017b ) in order to attract pollinators, although continental surveys ( Chittka and Menzel, 1992 ; Dyer et al, 2012 ; Bukovac et al, 2017a ) and community studies ( Kantsa et al, 2017 , 2018 ; Shrestha et al, 2019b ) reveal that plant flowers frequently converge to preferred signals of particular pollinators.…”

Section: Nutrient Availability and Plant Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Fragmentary Blue: Resolving the Rarity Paradox in Flower Colors

Dyer

Jentsch²,

Burd³

et al. 2021

Front. Plant Sci.

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Blue is a favored color of many humans. While blue skies and oceans are a common visual experience, this color is less frequently observed in flowers. We first review how blue has been important in human culture, and thus how our perception of blue has likely influenced the way of scientifically evaluating signals produced in nature, including approaches as disparate as Goethe’s Farbenlehre, Linneaus’ plant taxonomy, and current studies of plant-pollinator networks. We discuss the fact that most animals, however, have different vision to humans; for example, bee pollinators have trichromatic vision based on UV-, Blue-, and Green-sensitive photoreceptors with innate preferences for predominantly short-wavelength reflecting colors, including what we perceive as blue. The subsequent evolution of blue flowers may be driven by increased competition for pollinators, both because of a harsher environment (as at high altitude) or from high diversity and density of flowering plants (as in nutrient-rich meadows). The adaptive value of blue flowers should also be reinforced by nutrient richness or other factors, abiotic and biotic, that may reduce extra costs of blue-pigments synthesis. We thus provide new perspectives emphasizing that, while humans view blue as a less frequently evolved color in nature, to understand signaling, it is essential to employ models of biologically relevant observers. By doing so, we conclude that short wavelength reflecting blue flowers are indeed frequent in nature when considering the color vision and preferences of bees.

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“…Facilitation is crucial in severe environments since it allows species untolerant to stress or disturbance to persist in extreme habitats, thus increasing diversity (Hacker and Gaines 1997, Liancourt et al 2005, Michalet et al 2006, Xiao et al 2009, Le Bagousse‐Pinguet et al 2014a, Cavieres et al 2014). In addition, facilitation within plant communities can scale‐up to interactions at other trophic levels, such as pollinators or soil microbes, ultimately shaping ecological networks, the diversity of dependent communities and ecosystem functioning (Losapio and Schöb 2017, Lozano et al 2017, Losapio et al 2019, Wang et al 2020). Another key property of facilitation in water‐limited systems is its potential use as engineering tool for restoring degraded habitats (Padilla and Pugnaire 2006, Ibáñez and Rodríguez 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shift from short‐term competition to facilitation with drought stress is due to a decrease in long‐term facilitation

Chaieb

Wang

Abdelly

et al. 2020

Oikos

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Disentangling short-and long-term neighbour effects, using both removal and observational methods within a single experiment, has strongly improved our understanding of the driving mechanisms of plant-plant interactions. However, there has been no attempt to assess two important underlying processes of their changes along gradients, either environmental-severity (changes in target performance without neighbours) or neighbour-traits (changes in performance with neighbours) effects, the former previously shown in alpine communities to be involved in competition and the latter in facilitation. We addressed this goal in an experiment conducted in continental saline depressions (sebkhas) from the Mediterranean arid climate of central Tunisia. We quantified short-and long-term effects of dominant shrubs, transplanting three target grass species in open, nurse and removed-nurse microhabitats of two habitats of different salinity levels in height sebkhas. The design extended greographically from central Tunisia to the Libyan border, 500 km southeastward. We used the relative interaction index to calculate short-and long-term effects before and after the dry summer seasons and environmental-severity and neighbour-trait effects. Short-term effects were slightly negative and long-term effects strongly positive before the dry summer season in the two habitats. Short-term effects switched to positive with increasing drought stress, due to an environmental-severity effect, whereas long-term effects decreased due to a neighbour-trait effect. Salinity did not affect neither short-nor long-term shrub effects. Soil moisture measurements showed that both changes were due to vanishing shrub soil engineering-effects during the summer drought. We conclude that an increase in short-term facilitation with increasing drought stress through time, apparently supporting the stress gradient hypothesis, might be due to a decrease in longterm facilitation. Thus, we recommend using, as much as possible, both the removal and observational methods in experiments assessing changes in plant-plant interactions along stress gradients to avoid wrong conclusions.

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Facilitation between plants shapes pollination networks

Cited by 4 publications

References 41 publications

The assembly of a plant network in alpine vegetation

The assembly of a plant network in alpine vegetation

Fragmentary Blue: Resolving the Rarity Paradox in Flower Colors

Shift from short‐term competition to facilitation with drought stress is due to a decrease in long‐term facilitation

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