TY - JOUR
T1 - Opposing community assembly patterns for dominant and nondominant plant species in herbaceous ecosystems globally
AU - Arnillas, Carlos Alberto
AU - Borer, Elizabeth T.
AU - Seabloom, Eric W.
AU - Alberti, Juan
AU - Baez, Selene
AU - Bakker, Jonathan D.
AU - Boughton, Elizabeth H.
AU - Buckley, Yvonne M.
AU - Bugalho, Miguel Nuno
AU - Donohue, Ian
AU - Dwyer, John
AU - Eskelinen, Anu
AU - Firn, Jennifer
AU - Gridzak, Riley
AU - Hagenah, Nicole
AU - Hautier, Yann
AU - Helm, Aveliina
AU - Jentsch, Anke
AU - Knops, Johannes M.H.
AU - Komatsu, Kimberly J.
AU - Laanisto, Lauri
AU - Laungani, Ramesh
AU - McCulley, Rebecca
AU - Moore, Joslin L.
AU - Morgan, John W.
AU - Peri, Pablo Luis
AU - Power, Sally A.
AU - Price, Jodi
AU - Sankaran, Mahesh
AU - Schamp, Brandon
AU - Speziale, Karina
AU - Standish, Rachel
AU - Virtanen, Risto
AU - Cadotte, Marc W.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Biotic and abiotic factors interact with dominant plants—the locally most frequent or with the largest coverage—and nondominant plants differently, partially because dominant plants modify the environment where nondominant plants grow. For instance, if dominant plants compete strongly, they will deplete most resources, forcing nondominant plants into a narrower niche space. Conversely, if dominant plants are constrained by the environment, they might not exhaust available resources but instead may ameliorate environmental stressors that usually limit nondominants. Hence, the nature of interactions among nondominant species could be modified by dominant species. Furthermore, these differences could translate into a disparity in the phylogenetic relatedness among dominants compared to the relatedness among nondominants. By estimating phylogenetic dispersion in 78 grasslands across five continents, we found that dominant species were clustered (e.g., co-dominant grasses), suggesting dominant species are likely organized by environmental filtering, and that nondominant species were either randomly assembled or overdispersed. Traits showed similar trends for those sites (<50%) with sufficient trait data. Furthermore, several lineages scattered in the phylogeny had more nondominant species than expected at random, suggesting that traits common in nondominants are phylogenetically conserved and have evolved multiple times. We also explored environmental drivers of the dominant/nondominant disparity. We found different assembly patterns for dominants and nondominants, consistent with asymmetries in assembly mechanisms. Among the different postulated mechanisms, our results suggest two complementary hypotheses seldom explored: (1) Nondominant species include lineages adapted to thrive in the environment generated by dominant species. (2) Even when dominant species reduce resources to nondominant ones, dominant species could have a stronger positive effect on some nondominants by ameliorating environmental stressors affecting them, than by depleting resources and increasing the environmental stress to those nondominants. These results show that the dominant/nondominant asymmetry has ecological and evolutionary consequences fundamental to understand plant communities.
AB - Biotic and abiotic factors interact with dominant plants—the locally most frequent or with the largest coverage—and nondominant plants differently, partially because dominant plants modify the environment where nondominant plants grow. For instance, if dominant plants compete strongly, they will deplete most resources, forcing nondominant plants into a narrower niche space. Conversely, if dominant plants are constrained by the environment, they might not exhaust available resources but instead may ameliorate environmental stressors that usually limit nondominants. Hence, the nature of interactions among nondominant species could be modified by dominant species. Furthermore, these differences could translate into a disparity in the phylogenetic relatedness among dominants compared to the relatedness among nondominants. By estimating phylogenetic dispersion in 78 grasslands across five continents, we found that dominant species were clustered (e.g., co-dominant grasses), suggesting dominant species are likely organized by environmental filtering, and that nondominant species were either randomly assembled or overdispersed. Traits showed similar trends for those sites (<50%) with sufficient trait data. Furthermore, several lineages scattered in the phylogeny had more nondominant species than expected at random, suggesting that traits common in nondominants are phylogenetically conserved and have evolved multiple times. We also explored environmental drivers of the dominant/nondominant disparity. We found different assembly patterns for dominants and nondominants, consistent with asymmetries in assembly mechanisms. Among the different postulated mechanisms, our results suggest two complementary hypotheses seldom explored: (1) Nondominant species include lineages adapted to thrive in the environment generated by dominant species. (2) Even when dominant species reduce resources to nondominant ones, dominant species could have a stronger positive effect on some nondominants by ameliorating environmental stressors affecting them, than by depleting resources and increasing the environmental stress to those nondominants. These results show that the dominant/nondominant asymmetry has ecological and evolutionary consequences fundamental to understand plant communities.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85119605344&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85119605344&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/ece3.8266
DO - 10.1002/ece3.8266
M3 - Article
C2 - 35003636
AN - SCOPUS:85119605344
SN - 2045-7758
VL - 11
SP - 17744
EP - 17761
JO - Ecology and Evolution
JF - Ecology and Evolution
IS - 24
ER -