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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...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2015
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4468187 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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