Intransitive competition is widespread in plant communities and maintains their species richness

Soliveres, Santiago; Maestre, Fernando T.; Ulrich, Werner; Manning, Peter; Boch, Steffen; Bowker, Matthew A.; Prati, Daniel; Delgado‐Baquerizo, Manuel; Quero, José L.; Schöning, Ingo; Gallardo, Antonio; Weisser, Wolfgang W.; Müller, Jörg; Socher, Stephanie A.; García‐Gómez, Miguel; Ochoa, Victoria; Schulze, Ernst Detlef; Fischer, Markus; Allan, Eric

doi:10.1111/ele.12456

Cited by 164 publications

(267 citation statements)

References 48 publications

(170 reference statements)

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“…An increasing number of studies have shown that competitive relationships between plant species are not hierarchical but intransitive (de Kroon et al 2012;Soliveres et al 2015). Dynamics are obviously orders of magnitude slower than in bacterial communities but, interestingly, long-term observations have revealed patchy dynamics of grassland species that are reminiscent of those of the bacterial patches in petri dishes.…”

Section: Global Stability In Hyper-diverse Plant Communities Consistementioning

confidence: 99%

Chance, Variation and the Nature of Causality in Ecological Communities

Kroon

Jongejans

2016

The Frontiers Collection

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Chance is pervasive in nature. Erratic events such as storms and fires can cause major damage to an ecosystem. Rare successful long distance dispersal events like a viable seed landing in just the right habitat can form the stepping stone for range expansion of a plant species. Illustrated with two examples we argue that in ecology chance events are scale-dependent. We show how random stochastic variation in species interactions may result in relative stability at a higher community level. In other systems the reverse may take place, in which deterministic interactions result in unpredictable chaotic dynamics. Analysing the processes and dynamics at these different scales has led to an increasing mechanistic understanding of the variation in ecological communities in space and time. Unambiguous identification of cause and effect relations from this work is of the greatest importance, as many ecosystems in the world are not amenable to experimentation. This work should form the scientific basis for identifying the threats to ecosystems and defining proper conservation and mitigation measures.

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Section: Global Stability In Hyper-diverse Plant Communities Consistementioning

confidence: 99%

Chance, Variation and the Nature of Causality in Ecological Communities

Kroon

Jongejans

2016

The Frontiers Collection

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“…Thus, the structure of the competitive network-that is, the complete set of pairwise competitive outcomes among species (14)-should play an important role in the BEF relationship by dictating the nature and intensity of competitive interactions (and corresponding functional costs) exhibited across species in the community. Although the structure of the competitive network is increasingly acknowledged as an important driver of biodiversity and coexistence in competitive communities (14)(15)(16), whether or not the competitive network likewise affects ecosystem function remains largely untested.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…We focus on two measures of the competitive network: (i) competitive intransitivity (a continuous measure of the extent to which the community exhibits rockpaper-scissors relationships) and (ii) mean competitive ability (a continuous measure of how competitive the individuals in the community are, based on fully factorial pairwise interactions). These two properties were selected because of their importance in determining biodiversity and coexistence patterns across systems (15)(16)(17). We use a saprotrophic basidiomycete fungal community for several reasons.…”

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confidence: 99%

Competitive network determines the direction of the diversity–function relationship

Maynard

Crowther

Bradford

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

122

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The structure of the competitive network is an important driver of biodiversity and coexistence in natural communities. In addition to determining which species survive, the nature and intensity of competitive interactions within the network also affect the growth, productivity, and abundances of those individuals that persist. As such, the competitive network structure may likewise play an important role in determining community-level functioning by capturing the net costs of competition. Here, using an experimental system comprising 18 wood decay basidiomycete fungi, we test this possibility by quantifying the links among competitive network structure, species diversity, and community function. We show that species diversity alone has negligible impacts on community functioning, but that diversity interacts with two key properties of the competitive networkcompetitive intransitivity and average competitive ability-to ultimately shape biomass production, respiration, and carbon use efficiency. Most notably, highly intransitive communities comprising weak competitors exhibited a positive diversity-function relationship, whereas weakly intransitive communities comprising strong competitors exhibited a negative relationship. These findings demonstrate that competitive network structure can be an important determinant of community-level functioning, capturing a gradient from weakly to strongly competitive communities. Our research suggests that the competitive network may therefore act as a unifying link between diversity and function, providing key insight as to how and when losses in biodiversity will impact ecosystem function.competitive intransitivity | basidiomycete | interference | community assembly | ecosystem function T he relationship between biological diversity and ecosystem functioning is a central question in ecology and conservation, providing tangible links between natural systems and the provision of ecosystem services to humans. In recent decades, a wealth of studies have explored how ecosystem functioning responds to changes in various types of diversity (e.g., species, trait, or phylogenetic diversity), revealing the highly idiosyncratic nature of this relationship across systems (1). Functionally unique species with mutually exclusive resource requirements can exhibit greater productivity in diverse communities (2), whereas highly similar species with overlapping niches exhibit minimal increases in functioning as diversity increases (1, 3). Although the field of biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) research continues to gain momentum, the sheer complexity of ecological communities complicates the search for unifying patterns (1). As such, in most systems, we still lack the ability to predict a priori how changes in biodiversity will alter ecosystem function.The BEF relationship is often linked to the degree of functional redundancy, complementarity, or niche overlap among species (4-6). Yet this relationship can alternatively be formulated in terms of the nature, variability, and intensity of ...

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“…Therefore, GAM performed better on the low richness area than on the high richness area. Another reason is that stronger interspecific and intraspecific competitions might exist in communities with high species richness [36]. Biotic factors play an important role in shaping the species richness pattern in high richness areas.…”

Section: Performance Of Generalized Additive Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between Plant Species Richness and Terrain in Middle Sub-Tropical Eastern China

Song

Cao

2017

Forests

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Abstract:The objective of this research was to study the relation between species richness and topography in the middle sub-tropical area of Eastern China. A species richness survey was conducted along altitude in Kaihua County, Zhejiang Province, Eastern China. Topographic variables, such as altitude, slope, aspect, terrain roughness, relief degree and the topographical wetness index, were extracted from the digital elevation model. The Generalized Additive Model (GAM), the linear model and the quadratic model were used to fit response curves of species richness to topographic variables. The results indicated that altitude and the topographical wetness index have a significant relation to species richness. Species richness has a unimodal response to altitude and a linear response to the topographical wetness index. However, no significant correlations were observed between slope, aspect and species richness. The predicted species richness by GAM is significantly correlated with the observed species richness, whereas the prediction error tends to increase with the increment of species richness. This study furthered insights into the relationship between topography and plants' diversity in the middle sub-tropical area of Eastern China.

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Intransitive competition is widespread in plant communities and maintains their species richness

Cited by 164 publications

References 48 publications

Chance, Variation and the Nature of Causality in Ecological Communities

Chance, Variation and the Nature of Causality in Ecological Communities

Competitive network determines the direction of the diversity–function relationship

Relationships between Plant Species Richness and Terrain in Middle Sub-Tropical Eastern China

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