Plant functional traits and the multidimensional nature of species coexistence

  • Nathan J. B. Kraft
    Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742;
  • Oscar Godoy
    Department of Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106;
  • Jonathan M. Levine
    Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

書誌事項

公開日
2015-01-05
DOI
  • 10.1073/pnas.1413650112
公開者
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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説明

<jats:title>Significance</jats:title> <jats:p>Biologists have long understood that differences between species in traits such as bill shape or rooting depth can maintain diversity in communities by promoting specialization and reducing competition. Here we test the assumption that phenotypic differences drive the stabilizing niche differences that promote coexistence. Using advances in ecological theory and detailed experiments we quantify average fitness and stabilizing niche differences between 102 plant species pairs and relate these differences to 11 functional traits. Individual traits were correlated with fitness differences that drive competitive exclusion but not stabilizing niche differences that promote coexistence. Stabilizing niche differences could only be described by combinations of traits, representing differentiation in multiple dimensions. This challenges the simplistic use of trait patterns to infer community assembly.</jats:p>

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