Details zur Publikation

Kategorie Textpublikation
Referenztyp Zeitschriften
DOI 10.1007/s11258-006-9235-z
Volltext Shareable Link
Titel (primär) Competition hierarchy, transitivity and additivity: investigating the effect of fertilisation on plant-plant interactions using three common bryophytes
Autor Dormann, C.F.
Quelle Plant Ecology
Erscheinungsjahr 2007
Department CLE
Band/Volume 191
Heft 2
Seite von 171
Seite bis 184
Sprache englisch
Keywords Bryophytes; Community matrix; Competition; Facilitation; Lotka-Volterra; Stability; Transitivity
Abstract The way competition structures plant communities has been investigated intensely over many decades. Dominance structures due to competitive hierarchies, with consequences for species richness, have not received as much experimental attention, since their manipulation is a large logistic undertaking. Here the data from a model system based on bryophytes are presented to investigate competition structure in a three-species system. Grown in monocultures, pairwise and three-species mixtures under no and high nitrogen supply, the three moss species responded strongly to treatment conditions. One of them suffered from nitrogen fertilisation and hence performed better in mixtures, where the dominant species provided physical shelter from apparently toxic nitrogen spray. Accordingly, no linear competitive hierarchy emerged and qualitative transitivity remains restricted to the unfertilised treatments. Faciliation also affected other properties of the competition structure. The reciprocity of competition effects could not be observed. Moreover, the performances in three-species mixtures were not well predictable from the knowledge of monocultures and pairwise mixtures because competitive effects were not additive. This had implications for community stability at equilibrium: all two-species systems were stable, both fertilised and unfertilised, while the three-species system was only stable when fertilised. This stability under fertilisation has probably to do with the facilitative effect of the two dominant species on the third. In this experiment, little support for commonly held ideas was found about the way competition in plant communities is structured. On the other hand, this study shows that moss communities are ideal model systems to test predictions of theoretical models concerning properties and consequences of competition in plant communities.
dauerhafte UFZ-Verlinkung https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=1721
Dormann, C.F. (2007):
Competition hierarchy, transitivity and additivity: investigating the effect of fertilisation on plant-plant interactions using three common bryophytes
Plant Ecol. 191 (2), 171 - 184 10.1007/s11258-006-9235-z