Abstract
Although plant–plant interactions (i.e. competition and facilitation) have long been recognised as key drivers of plant community composition and dynamics, their global patterns and relationships with climate have remained unclear. Here, we assembled a global database of 10,502 pairs of empirical data from the literature to address the patterns of and climatic effects on the net outcome of plant interactions in natural communities. We found that plant interactions varied among plant performance indicators, interaction types and biomes, yet competition occurred more frequently than facilitation in plant communities worldwide. Unexpectedly, plant interactions showed weak latitudinal pattern and were weakly related to climate. Our study provides a global comprehensive overview of plant interactions, highlighting competition as a fundamental mechanism structuring plant communities worldwide. We suggest that further investigations should focus more on local factors (e.g. microclimate, soil and disturbance) than on macroclimate to identify key environmental determinants of interactions in plant communities.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1580-1593 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Ecology Letters |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Early online date | 23 Apr 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Mark D. Bertness from the Brown University, USA for critical comments on the previous version of this manuscript. We thank students in class 1501 of the School of Life Sciences, Shanxi Normal University for the assistance in collecting part of the data. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32071524, 31770514 and 31870711). International research travel by J.H.C.C. was partly funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW, CEP grant 12CDP007).
Funding Information:
We thank Mark D. Bertness from the Brown University, USA for critical comments on the previous version of this manuscript. We thank students in class 1501 of the School of Life Sciences, Shanxi Normal University for the assistance in collecting part of the data. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32071524, 31770514 and 31870711). International research travel by J.H.C.C. was partly funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW, CEP grant 12CDP007).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Funding
We thank Mark D. Bertness from the Brown University, USA for critical comments on the previous version of this manuscript. We thank students in class 1501 of the School of Life Sciences, Shanxi Normal University for the assistance in collecting part of the data. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32071524, 31770514 and 31870711). International research travel by J.H.C.C. was partly funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW, CEP grant 12CDP007). We thank Mark D. Bertness from the Brown University, USA for critical comments on the previous version of this manuscript. We thank students in class 1501 of the School of Life Sciences, Shanxi Normal University for the assistance in collecting part of the data. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32071524, 31770514 and 31870711). International research travel by J.H.C.C. was partly funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW, CEP grant 12CDP007).
Keywords
- biome
- climate
- competition
- facilitation
- global patterns
- plant performance
