Differences between symmetric and asymmetric facilitation matter: Exploring the interplay between modes of positive and negative plant interactions

Journal of Ecology

Volumn 100, Issue 6, 2012, Pages 1482-1491

  Lin, Yue ^a,b   Berger, Uta ^a   Grimm, Volker ^b,c   Ji, Qian Ru ^a  

^a DRESDEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY   (Germany)

^b HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH UFZ   (Germany)

^c UNIVERSITY OF POTSDAM   (Germany)

Author keywords

Asymmetry; Competition; Metabolic scaling theory; Plant population and community dynamics; Plant plant interaction; Self thinning; Spatial pattern; Stress gradient hypothesis; Symmetry

Indexed keywords

ASYMMETRY; COMMUNITY DYNAMICS; FACILITATION; INTERSPECIFIC COMPETITION; METABOLISM; MUTUALISM; SELF THINNING; SYMMETRY;

EID: 84867771893     PISSN: 00220477     EISSN: 13652745     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2012.02019.x     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Armas, C., Ordiales, R. & Pugnaire, F.I. (2004) Measuring plant interactions: a new comparative index. Ecology, 85, 2682-2686.
2. Berger, U., Piou, C., Schiffers, K. & Grimm, V. (2008) Competition among plants: concepts, individual-based modelling approaches, and a proposal for a future research strategy. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, 9, 121-135.
3. Bertness, M.D. & Callaway, R. (1994) Positive interactions in communities. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 9, 191-193.
4. Bronstein, J.L. (2009) The evolution of facilitation and mutualism. Journal of Ecology, 97, 1160-1170.
5. Brooker, R.W. & Callaway, R.M. (2009) Facilitation in the conceptual melting pot. Journal of Ecology, 97, 1117-1120.
6. Brooker, R., Kikvidze, Z., Pugnaire, F.I., Callaway, R.M., Choler, P., Lortie, C.J. & Michalet, R. (2005) The importance of importance. Oikos, 109, 63-70.
7. Brooker, R.W., Maestre, F.T., Callaway, R.M., Lortie, C.L., Cavieres, L.A., Kunstler, G. et al. (2008) Facilitation in plant communities: the past, the present, and the future. Journal of Ecology, 96, 18-34.
8. Brown, J.H., Gillooly, J.F., Allen, A.P., Savage, V.M. & West, G.B. (2004) Toward a metabolic theory of ecology. Ecology, 85, 1771-1789.
9. Callaway, R.M. (2007) Positive Interactions and Interdependence in Plant Communities. Springer, Dordrecht.
10. Callaway, R.M., Brooker, R.W., Choler, P., Kikvidze, Z., Lortie, C.J., Michalet, R. et al. (2002) Positive interactions among alpine plants increase with stress. Nature, 417, 844-848.
11. Cavieres, L.A. & Badano, E.I. (2009) Do facilitative interactions increase species richness at the entire community level? Journal of Ecology, 97, 1181-1191.
12. Chu, C.J., Maestre, F.T., Xiao, S., Weiner, J., Wang, Y.S., Duan, Z.H. et al. (2008) Balance between facilitation and resource competition determines biomass-density relationships in plant populations. Ecology Letters, 11, 1189-1197.
13. Chu, C.J., Weiner, J., Maestre, F.T., Xiao, S., Wang, Y.S., Li, Q. et al. (2009) Positive interactions can increase size inequality in plant populations. Journal of Ecology, 97, 1401-1407.
14. Chu, C.J., Weiner, J., Maestre, F.T., Wang, Y.S., Morris, C., Xiao, S. et al. (2010) Effects of positive interactions, size symmetry of competition and abiotic stress on self-thinning in simulated plant populations. Annals of Botany, 106, 647-652.
15. Enquist, B.J. (2002) Universal scaling in tree and vascular plant allometry: toward a general quantitative theory linking plant form and function from cells to ecosystems. Tree Physiology, 22, 1045-1064.
16. Enquist, B.J. & Niklas, K.J. (2001) Invariant scaling relations across tree-dominated communities. Nature, 410, 655-660.
17. Enquist, B.J., West, G.B. & Brown, J.H. (2009) Extensions and evaluations of a general quantitative theory of forest structure and dynamics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 7046.
18. Eränen, J.K. & Kozlov, M.V. (2008) Increasing intraspecific facilitation in exposed environments: consistent results from mountain birch populations in two subarctic stress gradients. Oikos, 117, 1569-1577.
19. Fajardo, A. & McIntire, E.J. (2010) Merged trees in second-growth, fire-origin forests in Patagonia, Chile: positive spatial association patterns andtheir ecological implications. American journal of botany, 97, 1424-1430.
20. Fajardo, A. & McIntire, E.J. (2011) Under strong niche overlap conspecifics do not compete but help each other to survive: facilitation at the intraspecific level. Journal of Ecology, 99, 642-650.
21. Grimm, V. & Railsback, S.F. (2005) Individual-Based Modeling and Ecology. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.
22. Grimm, V., Berger, U., Bastiansen, F., Eliassen, S., Ginot, V., Giske, J. et al. (2006) A standard protocol for describing individual-based and agent-based models. Ecological modelling, 198, 115-126.
23. Grimm, V., Berger, U., DeAngelis, D.L., Polhill, J.G., Giske, J. & Railsback, S.F. (2010) The ODD protocol: a review and first update. Ecological modelling, 221, 2760-2768.
24. Gross, K. (2008) Positive interactions among competitors can produce species-rich communities. Ecology Letters, 11, 929-936.
25. Haase, P. (2001) Can isotropy vs. anisotropy in the spatial association of plant species reveal physical vs. biotic facilitation? Journal of Vegetation Science, 12, 127-136.
26. Hou, C., Zuo, W., Moses, M.E., Woodruff, W.H., Brown, J.H. & West, G.B. (2008) Energy uptake and allocation during ontogeny. Science, 322, 736.
27. Jia, X., Dai, X.F., Shen, Z.X., Zhang, J.Y. & Wang, G.X. (2011) Facilitation can maintain clustered spatial pattern of plant populations during density-dependent mortality: insights from a zone-of-influence model. Oikos, 120, 472-480.
28. Kikvidze, Z., Pugnaire, F.I., Brooker, R.W., Choler, P., Lortie, C.J., Michalet, R. et al. (2005) Linking patterns and processes in alpine plant communities: a global study. Ecology, 86, 1395-1400.
29. Lambers, H., Chapin, F.S. & Pons, T.L. (2008) Plant Physiological Ecology. 2nd edition. Springer Verlag, New York, NY.
30. Maestre, F.T. & Cortina, J. (2004) Do positive interactions increase with abiotic stress? A test from a semi-arid steppe Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 271, S331-S333.
31. Maestre, F.T., Valladares, F. & Reynolds, J.F. (2005) Is the change of plant-plant interactions with abiotic stress predictable? A meta-analysis of field results in arid environments Journal of Ecology, 93, 748-757.
32. Maestre, F.T., Callaway, R.M., Valladares, F. & Lortie, C.J. (2009) Refining the stress-gradient hypothesis for competition and facilitation in plant communities. Journal of Ecology, 97, 199-205.
33. McIntire, E.J. & Fajardo, A. (2011) Facilitation within species: a possible origin of group-selected superorganisms. The American Naturalist, 178, 88-97.
34. Michalet, R., Xiao, S., Touzard, B., Smith, D.S., Cavieres, L.A., Callaway, R.M. & Whitham, T.G. (2011) Phenotypic variation in nurse traits and community feedbacks define an alpine community. Ecology Letters, 14, 433-443.
35. Pakeman, R.J., Pugnaire, F.I., Michalet, R., Lortie, C.J., Schiffers, K., Maestre, F.T. et al. (2009) Is the cask of facilitation ready for bottling? A symposium on the connectivity and future directions of positive plant interactions Biology Letters, 5, 577-579.
36. Perry, G.L., Miller, B.P. & Enright, N.J. (2006) A comparison of methods for the statistical analysis of spatial point patterns in plant ecology. Plant Ecology, 187, 59-82.
37. R Development Core Team (2010) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Available at: http://www.R-project.org. (accessed 17 February 2012).
38. Reinhart, K.O., Maestre, F.T. & Callaway, R.M. (2006) Facilitation and inhibition of seedlings of an invasive tree (Acer platanoides) by different tree species in a mountain ecosystem. Biological Invasions, 8, 231-240.
39. Ripley, B.D. (1981) Spatial Statistics. John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY.
40. Savage, V.M., Bentley, L.P., Enquist, B.J., Sperry, J.S., Smith, D.D., Reich, P.B. et al. (2010) Hydraulic trade-offs and space filling enable better predictions of vascular structure and function in plants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 22722.
41. Schwinning, S. & Weiner, J. (1998) Mechanisms determining the degree of size asymmetry in competition among plants. Oecologia, 113, 447-455.
42. Silvertown, J.W. & Charlesworth, D. (2001) Introduction to Plant Population Biology. Blackwell Publishing Limited, Oxford, UK.
43. Stoll, P. & Bergius, E. (2005) Pattern and process: competition causes regular spacing of individuals within plant populations. Journal of Ecology, 93, 395-403.
44. Tarroux, E. & DesRochers, A. (2011) Effect of natural root grafting on growth response of jack pine (Pinus banksiana; Pinaceae). American Journal of botany, 98, 967-974.
45. Tielbörger, K. & Kadmon, R. (2000) Temporal environmental variation tips the balance between facilitation and interference in desert plants. Ecology, 81, 1544-1553.
46. Vellend, M. (2008) Effects of diversity on diversity: consequences of competition and facilitation. Oikos, 117, 1075-1085.
47. Weiner, J., Stoll, P., Muller-Landau, H. & Jasentuliyana, A. (2001) The effects of density, spatial pattern, and competitive symmetry on size variation in simulated plant populations. The American Naturalist, 158, 438-450.
48. West, G.B., Brown, J.H. & Enquist, B.J. (2001) A general model for ontogenetic growth. Nature, 413, 628-631.
49. Wilensky, U. (1999). NetLogo. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University. Available at: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ (accessed 17 February 2012).