Opposing community assembly patterns for dominant and nondominant plant species in herbaceous ecosystems globally

Ecology and Evolution

Brandon Schamp¹  Elizabeth H. Boughton²  Miguel Nuno Bugalho³  Lauri Laanisto⁴  Marc W. Cadotte⁵  Selene Baez⁶  Anke Jentsch⁷  Johannes M. H. Knops⁸  Carlos Alberto Arnillas⁹  Rebecca McCulley^1,10  Nicole Hagenah^1,11  Yann Hautier^1,12  Risto Virtanen^1,13  Rachel Standish^1,14  Karina Speziale^1,15  Sally A. Power^1,16  Pablo Luis Peri^1,17  Jodi Price^1,18  Aveliina Helm^1,19  Juan Alberti^2,20  John W. Morgan^2,21  Mahesh Sankaran^2,22  Ramesh Laungani^2,23  Riley Gridzak^2,24  Jennifer Firn^2,25  Joslin L. Moore^2,26  Jonathan D. Bakker^2,27  Ian Donohue^2,28  Yvonne M. Buckley^2,28  Kimberly J. Komatsu^2,29  Eric W. Seabloom^3,30  Elizabeth T. Borer^3,30  John Dwyer^3,31 

[1] Algoma University Sault Ste. Marie ON Canada;Archbold Biological Station Venus Florida USA;Centre for Applied Ecology Prof. Baeta Neves (CEABN‐InBIO) School of Agriculture University of Lisbon Lisbon Portugal;Department of Agricutural and Environmental Sciences Estonian University of Life Sciences Tartu Estonia;Department of Biological Sciences University of Toronto Scarborough Toronto ON Canada;Department of Biology Escuela Politécnica Nacional Quito Ecuador;Department of Disturbance Ecology BayCEER University of Bayreuth Bayreuth Germany;Department of Health and Environmental Sciences Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University Suzhou China;Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences University of Toronto Scarborough Toronto ON Canada;Department of Plant and Soil Sciences University of Kentucky Lexington Kentucky USA;Department of Zoology and Entomology Mammal Research Institute University of Pretoria Pretoria South Africa;Ecology and Biodiversity Group Department of Biology Utrecht University Utrecht The Netherlands;Ecology and Genetics University of Oulu Oulu Finland;Environmental and Conservation Sciences, College of Science, Health, Engineering and Education Murdoch University Murdoch Western Australia Australia;Grupo de Investigaciones en Biología de la Conservación, Laboratorio Ecotono INIBIOMA (CONICET‐UNCOMA) San Carlos de Bariloche Río Negro Argentina;Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment Western Sydney University Penrith Australia;INTA‐UNPA‐CONICET Rio Gallegos Santa Cruz Argentina;Institute for Land, Water and Society Charles Sturt University Albury NSW Australia;Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences University of Tartu Tartu Estonia;Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (IIMyC, UNMdP, CONICET) Mar del Plata Argentina;La Trobe University Bundoora Vic Australia;National Centre for Biological Sciences TIFR Bengaluru India;Poly Prep Country Day School Brooklyn New York USA;Queen's University Kingston Ontario Canada;Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Brisbane Qld Australia;School of Biological Sciences Monash University Clayton Vic Australia;School of Environmental and Forest Sciences University of Washington Seattle Washington USA;School of Natural Sciences, Zoology Trinity College Dublin Dublin Ireland;Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Edgewater Maryland USA;University of Minnesota Saint Paul Minnesota USA;University of Queensland, School of Biological Sciences ST‐Lucia Qld Australia;

关键词: biodiversity;    community assembly;    evolutionary strategies;    grasslands;    Nutrient Network;    phylogenetic relatedness;   

DOI  :  10.1002/ece3.8266

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Abstract Biotic and abiotic factors interact with dominant plants—the locally most frequent or with the largest coverage—and nondominant plants differently, partially because dominant plants modify the environment where nondominant plants grow. For instance, if dominant plants compete strongly, they will deplete most resources, forcing nondominant plants into a narrower niche space. Conversely, if dominant plants are constrained by the environment, they might not exhaust available resources but instead may ameliorate environmental stressors that usually limit nondominants. Hence, the nature of interactions among nondominant species could be modified by dominant species. Furthermore, these differences could translate into a disparity in the phylogenetic relatedness among dominants compared to the relatedness among nondominants. By estimating phylogenetic dispersion in 78 grasslands across five continents, we found that dominant species were clustered (e.g., co‐dominant grasses), suggesting dominant species are likely organized by environmental filtering, and that nondominant species were either randomly assembled or overdispersed. Traits showed similar trends for those sites (<50%) with sufficient trait data. Furthermore, several lineages scattered in the phylogeny had more nondominant species than expected at random, suggesting that traits common in nondominants are phylogenetically conserved and have evolved multiple times. We also explored environmental drivers of the dominant/nondominant disparity. We found different assembly patterns for dominants and nondominants, consistent with asymmetries in assembly mechanisms. Among the different postulated mechanisms, our results suggest two complementary hypotheses seldom explored: (1) Nondominant species include lineages adapted to thrive in the environment generated by dominant species. (2) Even when dominant species reduce resources to nondominant ones, dominant species could have a stronger positive effect on some nondominants by ameliorating environmental stressors affecting them, than by depleting resources and increasing the environmental stress to those nondominants. These results show that the dominant/nondominant asymmetry has ecological and evolutionary consequences fundamental to understand plant communities.

【 授权许可】

Unknown