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Competition Is a Strong Driving Factor in Wetlands, Peaking during Drying Out Periods

The aim of the study is to investigate the relative importance of plant-plant interactions with regard to flooding and drought effect on perennial plant performances in wetlands. Flooding is expected to be the major driver and, accordingly, the importance of drought is hardly if ever taken into acco...

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Autores principales: Merlin, Amandine, Bonis, Anne, Damgaard, Christian F., Mesléard, François
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4468187/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26075597
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130152
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author Merlin, Amandine
Bonis, Anne
Damgaard, Christian F.
Mesléard, François
author_facet Merlin, Amandine
Bonis, Anne
Damgaard, Christian F.
Mesléard, François
author_sort Merlin, Amandine
collection PubMed
description The aim of the study is to investigate the relative importance of plant-plant interactions with regard to flooding and drought effect on perennial plant performances in wetlands. Flooding is expected to be the major driver and, accordingly, the importance of drought is hardly if ever taken into account. Focusing on five widespread species, the growth, the survival and the competitive ability of plants were monitored on permanent plots spread along two elevation gradients. Flooding duration and drought intensity were found to vary substantially along the ~ 0.5 meter range elevation gradient. Flooding and drought alternate over the hydrological year and the pin-point surveys were thus conducted over the course of one year. The data were modeled taking into account survival, recruitment and competitive growth throughout flooding and drying out periods. Flooding and drought both directly impacted the plant performances and their competitive effect, with the effect of drought being much more general among species and of higher magnitude than flooding. The importance of competition was found to be high for all species, particularly during the drying out period. It varied more along the flooding gradient than along the drought gradient. The higher flooding tolerance shown by the studied species compared to drought may be related to species specific growth timing together with efficient response traits. These results offer new insights into the filters operating over the species pools. This suggests that the drying out period and drought conditions may be even more important for species’ relative success and the importance of competition than the flooding pattern. The general applicability of this result, obtained in mild Atlantic climate and fertile wetlands, remains to be studied.
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spelling pubmed-44681872015-06-25 Competition Is a Strong Driving Factor in Wetlands, Peaking during Drying Out Periods Merlin, Amandine Bonis, Anne Damgaard, Christian F. Mesléard, François PLoS One Research Article The aim of the study is to investigate the relative importance of plant-plant interactions with regard to flooding and drought effect on perennial plant performances in wetlands. Flooding is expected to be the major driver and, accordingly, the importance of drought is hardly if ever taken into account. Focusing on five widespread species, the growth, the survival and the competitive ability of plants were monitored on permanent plots spread along two elevation gradients. Flooding duration and drought intensity were found to vary substantially along the ~ 0.5 meter range elevation gradient. Flooding and drought alternate over the hydrological year and the pin-point surveys were thus conducted over the course of one year. The data were modeled taking into account survival, recruitment and competitive growth throughout flooding and drying out periods. Flooding and drought both directly impacted the plant performances and their competitive effect, with the effect of drought being much more general among species and of higher magnitude than flooding. The importance of competition was found to be high for all species, particularly during the drying out period. It varied more along the flooding gradient than along the drought gradient. The higher flooding tolerance shown by the studied species compared to drought may be related to species specific growth timing together with efficient response traits. These results offer new insights into the filters operating over the species pools. This suggests that the drying out period and drought conditions may be even more important for species’ relative success and the importance of competition than the flooding pattern. The general applicability of this result, obtained in mild Atlantic climate and fertile wetlands, remains to be studied. Public Library of Science 2015-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC4468187/ /pubmed/26075597 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130152 Text en © 2015 Merlin 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
Merlin, Amandine
Bonis, Anne
Damgaard, Christian F.
Mesléard, François
Competition Is a Strong Driving Factor in Wetlands, Peaking during Drying Out Periods
title Competition Is a Strong Driving Factor in Wetlands, Peaking during Drying Out Periods
title_full Competition Is a Strong Driving Factor in Wetlands, Peaking during Drying Out Periods
title_fullStr Competition Is a Strong Driving Factor in Wetlands, Peaking during Drying Out Periods
title_full_unstemmed Competition Is a Strong Driving Factor in Wetlands, Peaking during Drying Out Periods
title_short Competition Is a Strong Driving Factor in Wetlands, Peaking during Drying Out Periods
title_sort competition is a strong driving factor in wetlands, peaking during drying out periods
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4468187/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26075597
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130152
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