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Are we missing the forest for the trees? Conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest

One of the central goals of ecology is to determine the mechanisms that enable coexistence among species. Evidence is accruing that conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD), the process by which plant seedlings are unable to survive in the area surrounding adults of their same species, is a ma...

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Autores principales: Barry, Kathryn E., Schnitzer, Stefan A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8282035/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34264937
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245639
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author Barry, Kathryn E.
Schnitzer, Stefan A.
author_facet Barry, Kathryn E.
Schnitzer, Stefan A.
author_sort Barry, Kathryn E.
collection PubMed
description One of the central goals of ecology is to determine the mechanisms that enable coexistence among species. Evidence is accruing that conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD), the process by which plant seedlings are unable to survive in the area surrounding adults of their same species, is a major contributor to tree species coexistence. However, for CNDD to maintain community-level diversity, three conditions must be met. First, CNDD must maintain diversity for the majority of the woody plant community (rather than merely specific groups). Second, the pattern of repelled recruitment must increase in with plant size. Third, CNDD should extend to the majority of plant life history strategies. These three conditions are rarely tested simultaneously. In this study, we simultaneously test all three conditions in a woody plant community in a North American temperate forest. We examined whether understory and canopy woody species across height categories and dispersal syndromes were overdispersed–a spatial pattern indicative of CNDD–using spatial point pattern analysis across life history stages and strategies. We found that there was a strong signal of overdispersal at the community level. Across the whole community, larger individuals were more overdispersed than smaller individuals. The overdispersion of large individuals, however, was driven by canopy trees. By contrast, understory woody species were not overdispersed as adults. This finding indicates that the focus on trees for the vast majority of CNDD studies may have biased the perception of the prevalence of CNDD as a dominant mechanism that maintains community-level diversity when, according to our data, CNDD may be restricted largely to trees.
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spelling pubmed-82820352021-07-28 Are we missing the forest for the trees? Conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest Barry, Kathryn E. Schnitzer, Stefan A. PLoS One Research Article One of the central goals of ecology is to determine the mechanisms that enable coexistence among species. Evidence is accruing that conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD), the process by which plant seedlings are unable to survive in the area surrounding adults of their same species, is a major contributor to tree species coexistence. However, for CNDD to maintain community-level diversity, three conditions must be met. First, CNDD must maintain diversity for the majority of the woody plant community (rather than merely specific groups). Second, the pattern of repelled recruitment must increase in with plant size. Third, CNDD should extend to the majority of plant life history strategies. These three conditions are rarely tested simultaneously. In this study, we simultaneously test all three conditions in a woody plant community in a North American temperate forest. We examined whether understory and canopy woody species across height categories and dispersal syndromes were overdispersed–a spatial pattern indicative of CNDD–using spatial point pattern analysis across life history stages and strategies. We found that there was a strong signal of overdispersal at the community level. Across the whole community, larger individuals were more overdispersed than smaller individuals. The overdispersion of large individuals, however, was driven by canopy trees. By contrast, understory woody species were not overdispersed as adults. This finding indicates that the focus on trees for the vast majority of CNDD studies may have biased the perception of the prevalence of CNDD as a dominant mechanism that maintains community-level diversity when, according to our data, CNDD may be restricted largely to trees. Public Library of Science 2021-07-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8282035/ /pubmed/34264937 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245639 Text en © 2021 Barry, Schnitzer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Barry, Kathryn E.
Schnitzer, Stefan A.
Are we missing the forest for the trees? Conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest
title Are we missing the forest for the trees? Conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest
title_full Are we missing the forest for the trees? Conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest
title_fullStr Are we missing the forest for the trees? Conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest
title_full_unstemmed Are we missing the forest for the trees? Conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest
title_short Are we missing the forest for the trees? Conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest
title_sort are we missing the forest for the trees? conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8282035/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34264937
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245639
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