Functional similarity and competitive symmetry control productivity in mixtures of Mediterranean perennial grasses
Por favor, use este identificador para citar o enlazar este ítem:
http://hdl.handle.net/10045/95401
Título: | Functional similarity and competitive symmetry control productivity in mixtures of Mediterranean perennial grasses |
---|---|
Autor/es: | Morcillo Juliá, Luna | Camacho-Garzón, Azucena | Calderón, Juan Sebastián | Bautista, Susana |
Grupo/s de investigación o GITE: | Gestión de Ecosistemas y de la Biodiversidad (GEB) |
Centro, Departamento o Servicio: | Universidad de Alicante. Departamento de Ecología | Universidad de Alicante. Instituto Multidisciplinar para el Estudio del Medio "Ramón Margalef" |
Palabras clave: | Functional similarity | Competitive symmetry | Control productivity | Mixtures | Mediterranean perennial grasses |
Área/s de conocimiento: | Ecología |
Fecha de publicación: | 23-ago-2019 |
Editor: | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
Cita bibliográfica: | Morcillo L, Camacho-Garzón A, Calderón JS, Bautista S (2019) Functional similarity and competitive symmetry control productivity in mixtures of Mediterranean perennial grasses. PLoS ONE 14(8): e0221667. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221667 |
Resumen: | Competition is a major factor structuring plant communities and controlling their productivity. The functional similarity between the interacting species and the context resource availability are assumed to be most critical factors that modulate the strength, sign, and outcome of plant competition, yet their roles and interactions are subjected to debate. In a glasshouse experiment, we constructed monocultures and bi-specific cultures of three common perennial grasses of Mediterranean drylands, the short grass Brachypodium retusum and the tussock grasses Stipa tenacissima and Lygeum spartum, and investigated how the functional similarity between these species modulate their interactions and culture productivity under contrasting levels of water availability. Regardless the degree of functional similarity between the interacting species, B. retusum consistently exhibited a greater competitive ability than the other two species, followed by L. spartum, and with S. tenacissima behaving as the weakest competitor. Bi-specific cultures of B. retusum and either L. spartum or S. tenacissima produced higher biomass than the average biomass of the respective monocultures (i.e. overyielding), whereas the combination of the most similar species, L. spartum—S. tenacissima, which exhibited the highest competition symmetry (i.e., the more similar mutual impact), did not show any significant overyielding. Higher water availability increased productivity and promoted transgressive overyielding for the most dissimilar species, B. retusum and L. spartum, which however exhibited intermediate competition asymmetry. This study calls attention to the thin line between differences in functional traits and competition asymmetry that could eventually lead to either competitive exclusion or resource partitioning and coexistence. |
Patrocinador/es: | This study was financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (http://www.ciencia.gob.es/) through the projects DRYEX (CGL2014-59074-R) and DRYEX2 (CGL2017-89804-R). The CEAM foundation is supported by Generalitat Valenciana. |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10045/95401 |
ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0221667 |
Idioma: | eng |
Tipo: | info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
Derechos: | © 2019 Morcillo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Revisión científica: | si |
Versión del editor: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221667 |
Aparece en las colecciones: | INV - DRYEX - Artículos de Revistas INV - GEB - Artículos de Revistas |
Archivos en este ítem:
Archivo | Descripción | Tamaño | Formato | |
---|---|---|---|---|
2019_Morcillo_etal_PLoS-ONE.pdf | 1,75 MB | Adobe PDF | Abrir Vista previa | |
Este ítem está licenciado bajo Licencia Creative Commons