Conspecific negative density dependence in rainy season enhanced seedling diversity across habitats in a tropical forest
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COMMUNITY ECOLOGY – ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Conspecific negative density dependence in rainy season enhanced seedling diversity across habitats in a tropical forest Xiaoyang Song1,2 · Wenfu Zhang1 · Daniel J. Johnson3 · Jie Yang1,4 · Mengesha Asefa1 · Xiaobao Deng1 · Xiaofei Yang1 · Min Cao1 Received: 18 March 2020 / Accepted: 10 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD) could be one of the most important local-scale mechanisms shaping plant species coexistence. However, the spatial and temporal changes in the strength CNDD and the implications for the plant diversity remain unknown. We used 10 years of seedling data, in a seasonal tropical rainforest, to discover how CNDD influences tree seedling survival across habitats and seasons. We also evaluated the relation between CNDD and species diversity. We found the strength of CNDD in the valley habitat was significantly stronger than in ridge habitat in rainy season, but not significantly different in dry season. Corresponding to expectations of CNDD as mechanism of diversity maintenance, seedling species diversity was significantly higher in valley habitat than in ridge habitat and significantly correlated with CNDD. Additionally, conspecific and heterospecific seedling neighbour densities positively affected the survival of tree seedlings, but heterospecific adult neighbour density had a weak effect. Our study finds that CNDD varied significantly across habitats and was correlated with local seedling diversity. Our results highlight the importance of CNDD in driving species diversity at the local scale. Recognizing the spatial and temporal variation in the strength of CNDD will aid efforts to model and understand species coexistence. Keywords Intraspecific · Janzen–Connell hypothesis · Plant–soil feedback · Plant–plant interaction · Species diversity
Introduction
Communicated by Marie-Josée Fortin. Xiaoyang Song and Wenfu Zhang contributed equally to this work. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04729-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Jie Yang [email protected] 1
CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla 666303, Yunnan, China
2
Center of Conservation Biology, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla 666303, China
3
School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
4
Center of Plant Ecology, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla 666303, China
Conspecific negative density dependence is a key mechanism that drives community assembly in tropical forests (Wright 2002; Comita et al. 2010; Forrister et al. 2019). Seedling survival tends to be lower under higher densities of conspecific neighbours, but greater when further away from conspecific trees which provide opportunities for other specie
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