TY - JOUR

T1 - A signal of competitive dominance in mid-latitude herbaceous plant communities

AU - Capitan, Jose A.

AU - Cuenda, Sara

AU - Ordonez, Alejandro

AU - Alonso, David

PY - 2021/9/22

Y1 - 2021/9/22

N2 - Understanding the main determinants of species coexistence across space and time is a central question in ecology. However, ecologists still know little about the scales and conditions at which biotic interactions matter and how these interact with the environment to structure species assemblages. Here we use recent theoretical developments to analyse plant distribution and trait data across Europe and find that plant height clustering is related to both evapotranspiration (ET) and gross primary productivity. This clustering is a signal of interspecies competition between plants, which is most evident in mid-latitude ecoregions, where conditions for growth (reflected in actual ET rates and gross primary productivities) are optimal. Away from this optimum, climate severity probably overrides the effect of competition, or other interactions become increasingly important. Our approach bridges the gap between species-rich competition theories and large-scale species distribution data analysis.

AB - Understanding the main determinants of species coexistence across space and time is a central question in ecology. However, ecologists still know little about the scales and conditions at which biotic interactions matter and how these interact with the environment to structure species assemblages. Here we use recent theoretical developments to analyse plant distribution and trait data across Europe and find that plant height clustering is related to both evapotranspiration (ET) and gross primary productivity. This clustering is a signal of interspecies competition between plants, which is most evident in mid-latitude ecoregions, where conditions for growth (reflected in actual ET rates and gross primary productivities) are optimal. Away from this optimum, climate severity probably overrides the effect of competition, or other interactions become increasingly important. Our approach bridges the gap between species-rich competition theories and large-scale species distribution data analysis.

KW - ecological community dynamics

KW - plant diversity

KW - species coexistence

KW - biogeographic patterns

KW - null hypotheses testing

KW - stochastic Markov processes in continuous time

KW - ADAPTIVE SIGNIFICANCE

KW - FUNCTIONAL TRAITS

KW - STOCHASTIC-THEORY

KW - FIELD EXPERIMENTS

KW - PATTERNS

KW - FACILITATION

KW - SIMILARITY

KW - DIVERSITY

KW - HEIGHT

KW - NORTH

U2 - 10.1098/rsos.201361

DO - 10.1098/rsos.201361

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 34567583

VL - 8

JO - Royal Society Open Science

JF - Royal Society Open Science

SN - 2054-5703

IS - 9

M1 - 201361

ER -