High shoot plasticity favours plant coexistence in herbaceous vegetation |
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Authors: | Email author" target="_blank">Mari?LepikEmail author Jaan?Liira Kristjan?Zobel |
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Institution: | (1) Institute of Botany and Ecology, Tartu University, 40 Lai St, 51005 Tartu, Estonia |
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Abstract: | Several theoretical considerations imply that high shoot morphological plasticity could increase competition symmetry and
favour plant coexistence. We tested whether mean plasticity across co-occurring species is a key trait for explaining ramet
density and species richness in herbaceous vegetation. We used three data sets to test the hypotheses: (a) experimentally
achieved estimates of plasticity to light availability for 35 herbaceous species; (b) richness, ramet density and canopy architecture
data from 17 herbaceous communities; (c) species richness data from a 5-year permanent-plot study in a calcareous grassland.
In herbaceous communities containing species with relatively higher shoot plasticity, ramet density was significantly higher.
Consequently, relatively more species were growing per unit area—a greater proportion of the community species pool was represented
on 1 m2. In the permanent plot study species-richness was higher in those 40×40 cm quadrats where species with high shoot plasticity
prevailed—there was a positive regression of richness on the mean plasticity of species. This relationship was highly significant
in five consecutive years. Our results suggest that shoot plasticity to light availability is evidently one of the key traits
in processes that alter the density of co-existing plants and, therefore, species diversity in herbaceous communities.
Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available for this article at |
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Keywords: | Competition asymmetry Morphological plasticity Ramet density Species richness |
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