Opposing community assembly patterns for dominant and nondominant plant species in herbaceous ecosystems globally

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dc.contributor.author Arnillas, Carlos Alberto
dc.contributor.author Borer, Elizabeth
dc.contributor.author Seabloom, Eric W.
dc.contributor.author Alberti, Juan
dc.contributor.author Baez, Selene
dc.contributor.author Bakker, Jonathon
dc.contributor.author Boughton, Elizabeth
dc.contributor.author Buckley, Yvonne
dc.contributor.author Bugalho, Miguel Nuno
dc.contributor.author Donohue, Ian
dc.contributor.author Dwyer, John
dc.contributor.author Eskelinen, Anu
dc.contributor.author Firn, Jennifer
dc.contributor.author Gridzak, Riley
dc.contributor.author Hagenah, Nicole
dc.contributor.author Hautier, Yann
dc.contributor.author Helm, Aveliina
dc.contributor.author Jentsch, Anke
dc.contributor.author Knops, Johannes M.H.
dc.contributor.author Komatsu, Kimberly J.
dc.contributor.author Laanisto, Lauri
dc.contributor.author Laungani, Ramesh
dc.contributor.author McCulley, Rebecca L.
dc.contributor.author Moore, Joslin L.
dc.contributor.author Morgan, John
dc.contributor.author Peri, Pablo Luis
dc.contributor.author Power, Sally A.
dc.contributor.author Price, Jodi
dc.contributor.author Sankaran, Mahesh
dc.contributor.author Schamp, Brandon
dc.contributor.author Speziale, Karina L.
dc.contributor.author Standish, Rachel
dc.contributor.author Virtanen, Risto
dc.contributor.author Cadotte, Marc W.
dc.date.accessioned 2022-05-19T08:16:01Z
dc.date.available 2022-05-19T08:16:01Z
dc.date.issued 2021-12
dc.description.abstract 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. en_US
dc.description.department Mammal Research Institute en_US
dc.description.department Zoology and Entomology en_US
dc.description.librarian hj2022 en_US
dc.description.sponsorship National Science Foundation; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota and Portuguese Science Foundation. en_US
dc.description.uri http://www.ecolevol.org en_US
dc.identifier.citation Arnillas, C. A., Borer, E. T., Seabloom, E. W., Alberti, J., Baez, S., Bakker, J. D., Boughton, E. H., Buckley, Y. M., Bugalho, M. N., Donohue, I., Dwyer, J., Firn, J., Gridzak, R., Hagenah, N., Hautier, Y., Helm, A., Jentsch, A., Knops, J. M. H., Komatsu, K. J., ... Cadotte, M. W. (2021). Opposing community assembly patterns for dominant and nondominant plant species in herbaceous ecosystems globally. Ecology and Evolution, 11, 17744–17761. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8266. en_US
dc.identifier.issn 2045-7758 (online)
dc.identifier.other 10.1002/ece3.8266
dc.identifier.uri https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/85578
dc.language.iso en en_US
dc.publisher Wiley Open Access en_US
dc.rights © 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. en_US
dc.subject Biodiversity en_US
dc.subject Community assembly en_US
dc.subject Evolutionary strategies en_US
dc.subject Grasslands en_US
dc.subject Nutrient network en_US
dc.subject Phylogenetic relatedness en_US
dc.subject Species dominance en_US
dc.subject Species nondominance en_US
dc.title Opposing community assembly patterns for dominant and nondominant plant species in herbaceous ecosystems globally en_US
dc.type Article en_US


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