Horizontal, but not vertical, biotic interactions affect fine-scale plant distribution patterns in a low-energy system

Détails

ID Serval
serval:BIB_4B8FF7BD0B4C
Type
Article: article d'un périodique ou d'un magazine.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Titre
Horizontal, but not vertical, biotic interactions affect fine-scale plant distribution patterns in a low-energy system
Périodique
Ecology
Auteur⸱e⸱s
Le Roux P., Lenoir J., Pellissier L., Wisz M.S., Luoto M.
ISSN
0012-9658
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
2013
Volume
94
Numéro
3
Pages
671-682
Langue
anglais
Résumé
Studies of species range determinants have traditionally focused on abiotic variables (typically climatic conditions), and therefore the recent explicit consideration of biotic interactions represents an important advance in the field. While these studies clearly support the role of biotic interactions in shaping species distributions, most examine only the influence of a single species and/or a single interaction, failing to account for species being subject to multiple concurrent interactions. By fitting species distribution models (SDMs), we examine the influence of multiple vertical (i.e., grazing, trampling, and manuring by mammalian herbivores) and horizontal (i.e., competition and facilitation; estimated from the cover of dominant plant species) interspecific interactions on the occurrence and cover of 41 alpine tundra plant species. Adding plant-plant interactions to baseline SDMs (using five field-quantified abiotic variables) significantly improved models' predictive power for independent data, while herbivore-related variables had only a weak influence. Overall, abiotic variables had the strongest individual contributions to the distribution of alpine tundra plants, with the importance of horizontal interaction variables exceeding that of vertical interaction variables. These results were consistent across three modeling techniques, for both species occurrence and cover, demonstrating the pattern to be robust. Thus, the explicit consideration of multiple biotic interactions reveals that plant-plant interactions exert control over the fine-scale distribution of vascular species that is comparable to abiotic drivers and considerably stronger than herbivores in this low-energy system.
Mots-clé
alpine, arctic, competition, disturbance, facilitation, herbivory, mountain tundra, species distribution modeling, trophic interactions
Web of science
Création de la notice
26/10/2012 21:47
Dernière modification de la notice
20/08/2019 13:59
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