The effects of density dependence and habitat preference on species coexistence and relative abundance
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COMMUNITY ECOLOGY – ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The effects of density dependence and habitat preference on species coexistence and relative abundance Yi Zheng1 · Fengmin Huang1 · Minxia Liang1 · Xubing Liu1 · Shixiao Yu1 Received: 27 November 2019 / Accepted: 10 October 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In plant communities, some mechanisms maintain differences in species’ abundances, while other mechanisms promote coexistence. Asymmetry in conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD) and/or habitat preference is hypothesized to shape relative species abundance, whereas community compensatory trends (CCTs) induced by community-level CNDD and heterospecific facilitation are hypothesized to promote coexistence. We use survey data from three 1-ha permanent dynamic plots in a subtropical forest over the course of a decade to find out which of these processes are important and at which lifehistory stages (the seedling, sapling, and juvenile stages) they exert their effects. CNDD was not related to abundance in any of the life-history stages. Suitable habitats positively influenced plant abundance at all tested life stages, but especially so for juveniles. Community-level CNDD of seedling neighbors was detected at the seedling stage, while heterospecific facilitation was detected across all tested life-history stages. A CCT in seedling survival was detected, but there was no evidence for such trends across the other life-history stages. Altogether, our results suggest that habitat specificity increases the rarity of species, whereas a CCT at the seedling stage, which is likely to be induced by CNDD and heterospecific facilitation, enables such species to maintain their populations. Keywords Abundance · Compensatory trend · Density dependence · Habitat preference · Phylogenetic distance
Introduction In a forest community, most coexisting species persist with small populations, whereas only a few species have large populations (McGill et al. 2007). Exploring the causes of this pattern is vital to understanding community assembly. Asymmetry in conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD) is a possible mechanism for abundance differentiation. Species suffering stronger CNDD tend to decrease in abundance in a community (Comita et al. 2010; Johnson et al. 2012), although the strength of the relationships Communicated by Tomas A Carlo. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04788-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Shixiao Yu [email protected] 1
Department of Ecology, School of Life Sciences/State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
between CNDD and abundance can change with the latitude in which the communities are located (LaManna et al. 2017). Detto et al. (2019) further pointed out that it could be a spurious trend because the density measurements were error-prone proxies (EPP) which would result in disproportionate under
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