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Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.1007/s11258-006-9235-z
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Title (Primary) Competition hierarchy, transitivity and additivity: investigating the effect of fertilisation on plant-plant interactions using three common bryophytes
Author Dormann, C.F.
Source Titel Plant Ecology
Year 2007
Department CLE
Volume 191
Issue 2
Page From 171
Page To 184
Language 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.
Persistent UFZ Identifier 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