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Evidence from Individual Inference for High-Dimensional Coexistence: Long-Term Experiments on Recruitment Response

BACKGROUND: For competing species to coexist, individuals must compete more with others of the same species than with those of other species. Ecologists search for tradeoffs in how species might partition the environment. The negative correlations among competing species that would be indicative of...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Clark, James S., Soltoff, Benjamin D., Powell, Amanda S., Read, Quentin D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3290613/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22393349
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0030050
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author Clark, James S.
Soltoff, Benjamin D.
Powell, Amanda S.
Read, Quentin D.
author_facet Clark, James S.
Soltoff, Benjamin D.
Powell, Amanda S.
Read, Quentin D.
author_sort Clark, James S.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: For competing species to coexist, individuals must compete more with others of the same species than with those of other species. Ecologists search for tradeoffs in how species might partition the environment. The negative correlations among competing species that would be indicative of tradeoffs are rarely observed. A recent analysis showed that evidence for partitioning the environment is available when responses are disaggregated to the individual scale, in terms of the covariance structure of responses to environmental variation. That study did not relate that variation to the variables to which individuals were responding. To understand how this pattern of variation is related to niche variables, we analyzed responses to canopy gaps, long viewed as a key variable responsible for species coexistence. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A longitudinal intervention analysis of individual responses to experimental canopy gaps with 12 yr of pre-treatment and 8 yr post-treatment responses showed that species-level responses are positively correlated – species that grow fast on average in the understory also grow fast on average in response to gap formation. In other words, there is no tradeoff. However, the joint distribution of individual responses to understory and gap showed a negative correlation – species having individuals that respond most to gaps when previously growing slowly also have individuals that respond least to gaps when previously growing rapidly (e.g., Morus rubra), and vice versa (e.g., Quercus prinus). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Because competition occurs at the individual scale, not the species scale, aggregated species-level parameters and correlations hide the species-level differences needed for coexistence. By disaggregating models to the scale at which the interaction occurs we show that individual variation provides insight for species differences.
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spelling pubmed-32906132012-03-05 Evidence from Individual Inference for High-Dimensional Coexistence: Long-Term Experiments on Recruitment Response Clark, James S. Soltoff, Benjamin D. Powell, Amanda S. Read, Quentin D. PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: For competing species to coexist, individuals must compete more with others of the same species than with those of other species. Ecologists search for tradeoffs in how species might partition the environment. The negative correlations among competing species that would be indicative of tradeoffs are rarely observed. A recent analysis showed that evidence for partitioning the environment is available when responses are disaggregated to the individual scale, in terms of the covariance structure of responses to environmental variation. That study did not relate that variation to the variables to which individuals were responding. To understand how this pattern of variation is related to niche variables, we analyzed responses to canopy gaps, long viewed as a key variable responsible for species coexistence. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A longitudinal intervention analysis of individual responses to experimental canopy gaps with 12 yr of pre-treatment and 8 yr post-treatment responses showed that species-level responses are positively correlated – species that grow fast on average in the understory also grow fast on average in response to gap formation. In other words, there is no tradeoff. However, the joint distribution of individual responses to understory and gap showed a negative correlation – species having individuals that respond most to gaps when previously growing slowly also have individuals that respond least to gaps when previously growing rapidly (e.g., Morus rubra), and vice versa (e.g., Quercus prinus). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Because competition occurs at the individual scale, not the species scale, aggregated species-level parameters and correlations hide the species-level differences needed for coexistence. By disaggregating models to the scale at which the interaction occurs we show that individual variation provides insight for species differences. Public Library of Science 2012-02-29 /pmc/articles/PMC3290613/ /pubmed/22393349 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0030050 Text en Clark et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Clark, James S.
Soltoff, Benjamin D.
Powell, Amanda S.
Read, Quentin D.
Evidence from Individual Inference for High-Dimensional Coexistence: Long-Term Experiments on Recruitment Response
title Evidence from Individual Inference for High-Dimensional Coexistence: Long-Term Experiments on Recruitment Response
title_full Evidence from Individual Inference for High-Dimensional Coexistence: Long-Term Experiments on Recruitment Response
title_fullStr Evidence from Individual Inference for High-Dimensional Coexistence: Long-Term Experiments on Recruitment Response
title_full_unstemmed Evidence from Individual Inference for High-Dimensional Coexistence: Long-Term Experiments on Recruitment Response
title_short Evidence from Individual Inference for High-Dimensional Coexistence: Long-Term Experiments on Recruitment Response
title_sort evidence from individual inference for high-dimensional coexistence: long-term experiments on recruitment response
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3290613/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22393349
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0030050
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