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Inhibition or Facilitation? Contrasted Inter-Specific Interactions in Sphagnum under Laboratory and Field Conditions

In a natural environment, plants usually interact with their neighbors predominantly through resource competition, allelopathy, and facilitation. The occurrence of the positive effect of allelopathy between peat mosses (Sphagnum L.) is rare, but it has been observed in a field experiment. It is uncl...

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Autores principales: Liu, Chao, Bu, Zhao-Jun, Mallik, Azim, Chen, Yong-Da, Hu, Xue-Feng, Lu, Fan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7696925/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33198278
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants9111554
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author Liu, Chao
Bu, Zhao-Jun
Mallik, Azim
Chen, Yong-Da
Hu, Xue-Feng
Lu, Fan
author_facet Liu, Chao
Bu, Zhao-Jun
Mallik, Azim
Chen, Yong-Da
Hu, Xue-Feng
Lu, Fan
author_sort Liu, Chao
collection PubMed
description In a natural environment, plants usually interact with their neighbors predominantly through resource competition, allelopathy, and facilitation. The occurrence of the positive effect of allelopathy between peat mosses (Sphagnum L.) is rare, but it has been observed in a field experiment. It is unclear whether the stability of the water table level in peat induces positive vs. negative effects of allelopathy and how that is related to phenolic allelochemical production in Sphagnum. Based on field experiment data, we established a laboratory experiment with three neighborhood treatments to measure inter-specific interactions between Sphagnum angustifolium (Russ.) C. Jens and Sphagnum magellanicum Brid. We found that the two species were strongly suppressed by the allelopathic effects of each other. S. magellanicum allelopathically facilitated S. angustifolium in the field but inhibited it in the laboratory, and relative allelopathy intensity appeared to be positively related to the content of released phenolics. We conclude that the interaction type and intensity between plants are dependent on environmental conditions. The concentration of phenolics alone may not explain the type and relative intensity of allelopathy. Carefully designed combined field and laboratory experiments are necessary to reveal the mechanism of species interactions in natural communities.
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spelling pubmed-76969252020-11-29 Inhibition or Facilitation? Contrasted Inter-Specific Interactions in Sphagnum under Laboratory and Field Conditions Liu, Chao Bu, Zhao-Jun Mallik, Azim Chen, Yong-Da Hu, Xue-Feng Lu, Fan Plants (Basel) Article In a natural environment, plants usually interact with their neighbors predominantly through resource competition, allelopathy, and facilitation. The occurrence of the positive effect of allelopathy between peat mosses (Sphagnum L.) is rare, but it has been observed in a field experiment. It is unclear whether the stability of the water table level in peat induces positive vs. negative effects of allelopathy and how that is related to phenolic allelochemical production in Sphagnum. Based on field experiment data, we established a laboratory experiment with three neighborhood treatments to measure inter-specific interactions between Sphagnum angustifolium (Russ.) C. Jens and Sphagnum magellanicum Brid. We found that the two species were strongly suppressed by the allelopathic effects of each other. S. magellanicum allelopathically facilitated S. angustifolium in the field but inhibited it in the laboratory, and relative allelopathy intensity appeared to be positively related to the content of released phenolics. We conclude that the interaction type and intensity between plants are dependent on environmental conditions. The concentration of phenolics alone may not explain the type and relative intensity of allelopathy. Carefully designed combined field and laboratory experiments are necessary to reveal the mechanism of species interactions in natural communities. MDPI 2020-11-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7696925/ /pubmed/33198278 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants9111554 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Liu, Chao
Bu, Zhao-Jun
Mallik, Azim
Chen, Yong-Da
Hu, Xue-Feng
Lu, Fan
Inhibition or Facilitation? Contrasted Inter-Specific Interactions in Sphagnum under Laboratory and Field Conditions
title Inhibition or Facilitation? Contrasted Inter-Specific Interactions in Sphagnum under Laboratory and Field Conditions
title_full Inhibition or Facilitation? Contrasted Inter-Specific Interactions in Sphagnum under Laboratory and Field Conditions
title_fullStr Inhibition or Facilitation? Contrasted Inter-Specific Interactions in Sphagnum under Laboratory and Field Conditions
title_full_unstemmed Inhibition or Facilitation? Contrasted Inter-Specific Interactions in Sphagnum under Laboratory and Field Conditions
title_short Inhibition or Facilitation? Contrasted Inter-Specific Interactions in Sphagnum under Laboratory and Field Conditions
title_sort inhibition or facilitation? contrasted inter-specific interactions in sphagnum under laboratory and field conditions
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7696925/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33198278
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants9111554
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