Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA.
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2020 May;23(5):791-799. doi: 10.1111/ele.13477. Epub 2020 Feb 21.
Most of the classical theory on species coexistence has been based on species-level competitive trade-offs. However, it is becoming apparent that plant species display high levels of trait plasticity. The implications of this plasticity are almost completely unknown for most coexistence theory. Here, we model a competition-colonisation trade-off and incorporate trait plasticity to evaluate its effects on coexistence. Our simulations show that the classic competition-colonisation trade-off is highly sensitive to environmental circumstances, and coexistence only occurs in narrow ranges of conditions. The inclusion of plasticity, which allows shifts in competitive hierarchies across the landscape, leads to coexistence across a much broader range of competitive and environmental conditions including disturbance levels, the magnitude of competitive differences between species, and landscape spatial patterning. Plasticity also increases the number of species that persist in simulations of multispecies assemblages. Plasticity may generally increase the robustness of coexistence mechanisms and be an important component of scaling coexistence theory to higher diversity communities.
大多数关于物种共存的经典理论都是基于种间竞争权衡的。然而，植物物种表现出高水平的性状可塑性，这一点越来越明显。对于大多数共存理论来说，这种可塑性的影响几乎完全未知。在这里，我们构建了一个竞争-定居权衡模型，并纳入了性状可塑性，以评估其对共存的影响。我们的模拟结果表明，经典的竞争-定居权衡对环境条件非常敏感，只有在狭窄的条件范围内才会共存。可塑性的加入允许竞争等级在景观中发生变化，从而使共存能够在更广泛的竞争和环境条件范围内发生，包括干扰水平、物种间竞争差异的大小以及景观空间模式。可塑性还增加了在多物种组合模拟中能够持续存在的物种数量。可塑性通常可以提高共存机制的稳健性，并且是将共存理论扩展到更高多样性群落的重要组成部分。
