Centro de Investigaciones Sobre Desertificación (CIDE, CSIC-UV-GV), Moncada, Spain.
Ecology. 2023 Feb;104(2):e3961. doi: 10.1002/ecy.3961. Epub 2023 Jan 5.
Facilitative interactions bind community species in intricate ecological networks, preserving species that would otherwise be lost. The traditional understanding of ecological networks as static components of biological communities overlooks the fact that species interactions in a network can fluctuate. Analyzing the patterns that cause those shifts can reveal the principles that govern the identity of pairwise interactions and whether they are predictable based on the traits of the interacting species and the local environmental contexts in which they occur. Here we explore how abiotic stress and phylogenetic and functional affinities constrain those shifts. Specifically, we hypothesize that rewiring the facilitative interactions is more limited in stressful than in mild environments. We present evidence of a distinct pattern in the rewiring of facilitation-driven communities at different stress levels. In highly stressful environments with a firm reliance on facilitation, rewiring is limited to growing beneath nurse species with traits to overcome harsh stressful conditions. However, when environments are milder, rewiring is more flexible, although it is still constrained to nurses that are close relatives. Understanding the ability of species to rewire their interactions is crucial for predicting how communities may respond to the unprecedented rate of perturbations on Earth.
促进性相互作用将社区物种绑定在错综复杂的生态网络中，从而保护那些否则会消失的物种。传统上将生态网络理解为生物群落的静态组成部分，忽略了网络中物种相互作用可能会波动的事实。分析导致这些变化的模式可以揭示支配成对相互作用的原则，以及它们是否可以根据相互作用的物种的特征以及它们所处的局部环境背景来预测。在这里，我们探讨了非生物胁迫以及系统发育和功能亲缘关系如何限制这些变化。具体来说，我们假设在胁迫环境中，促进性相互作用的重新布线比在温和环境中受到更多限制。我们提出了在不同胁迫水平下促进驱动社区重新布线的独特模式的证据。在高度胁迫的环境中，严重依赖促进作用，重新布线仅限于在具有克服恶劣胁迫条件的特征的护士物种下生长。但是，当环境较温和时，重新布线更加灵活，尽管仍然局限于近亲的护士物种。了解物种重新布线相互作用的能力对于预测社区可能如何应对地球上前所未有的干扰速度至关重要。
