Positive interactions among alpine plants increase with stress

By R. Callaway, Rob W. Brooker, Philippe Choler, Z. Kikvidze, Christopher J. Lortie, Richard Michalet, L. Paolini, F. Pugnaire, B. Newingham, Erik T. Aschehoug and 3 more. Nature, 2002

1,909 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Plants can have positive effects on each other. For example, the accumulation of nutrients, provision of shade, amelioration of disturbance, or protection from herbivores by some species can enhance the performance of neighbouring species. Thus the notion that the distributions and abundances of plant species are independent of other species may be inadequate as a theoretical underpinning for understanding species coexistence and diversity. But there have been no large-scale experiments designed to examine the generality of positive interactions in plant communities and their importance relative to competition. Here we show that the biomass, growth and reproduction of alpine plant species are higher when other plants are nearby. In an experiment conducted in subalpine and alpine plant communities with 115 species in 11 different mountain ranges, we find that competition generally, but not exclusively, dominates interactions at lower elevations where conditions are less physically stressful. In contrast, at high elevations where abiotic stress is high the interactions among plants are predominantly positive. Furthermore, across all high and low sites positive interactions are more important at sites with low temperatures in the early summer, but competition prevails at warmer sites.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4637feba790ad744d75a2bde5970bc81b0cc41d5

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Citations in the corpus

Spatial scale and intraspecific trait variability mediate assembly rules in alpine grasslands (2017, background): “While a divergent functional diversity pattern can also be interpreted to be the result of limiting similarity, in stressful environments facilitation is known to be the most important form of biotic interaction (Choler, Michalet & Callaway 2001; Callaway et al. 2002).”
Effects of competition on tree radial‐growth vary in importance but not in intensity along climatic gradients (2011, background): “Removal experiments in herbaceous communities often show that plant–plant interactions may shift from competitive to facilitative with increasing abiotic stress (Callaway et al. 2002; Holzapfel et al. 2006 and references in Lortie & Callaway 2006).”
Plant communities at the periphery of the Atlantic rain forest: rare-species bias and its risks for conservation. (2009, neutral): “Therefore, nurse plants promote facilitation enhancing fitness, survival and/ or growth of associated species (Callaway et al., 2002; Bruno et al., 2003; Brooker et al., 2008).”
The role of biotic interactions in shaping distributions and realised assemblages of species: implications for species distribution modelling (2012, background): “Experiments covering large environmental gradients (Callaway et al., 2002a; van der Putten et al., 2007; van der Putten, Macel & Visser, 2010), especially that cover large spatial extents (continental and global) at fine spatial and temporal resolutions are needed to give insight into how the…”
Ain't no mountain high enough: plant invasions reaching new elevations (2009, background): “On the other hand, facilitation is often found to increase with elevation, whereas competition decreases (Callaway et al. 2002), and, therefore, the presence of native plants at higher elevations could even increase the risk of invasion.”
Tree effects on grass growth in savannas: competition, facilitation and the stress‐gradient hypothesis (2013, background): “Indeed, ecological theory predicts an increasing importance of facilitation relative to competition along gradients of increasing abiotic stress (Bertness & Callaway 1994; Brooker & Callaghan 1998; Pugnaire & Luque 2001; Callaway et al. 2002; Maestre et al. 2009).”
Effects of altitude and topography on species richness of vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens in alpine communities (2006, background): “The importance of competition on community structure appears to be especially pronounced in benign environments, whereas in more stressful ones, competition appears to be relaxed (Grime 1973a, b, 1979; Sammul et al. 2000; Callaway et al. 2002) and the relative importance of the size of the regional ”
Inferring community assembly mechanisms from functional diversity patterns: the importance of multiple assembly processes (2012, background): “While this pattern is also consistent with increased facilitation in stressful environment (Callaway et al. 2002; Callaway 2007), resource partitioning mechanisms seem more likely given that the traits largely characterize differences in resource acquisition strate658 M.”
Facilitative interactions among plants via shared pollinators (2004, background): “E-mail: moell021@umn.edu Most examples of positive interactions between plants involve direct interactions where one species ameliorates the physical or resource environment of another species (e.g., Bertness and Callaway 1994, Callaway et al. 2002).”
High competitiveness of a resource demanding invasive acacia under low resource supply (2009, background): “…expected at high resource availability (Grime and Hodgson 1987 and references therein), whereas facilitation, defined here as a positive interaction effects, are more likely to occur under high but not excessive stress conditions (Callaway et al. 2002; Brooker et al. 2008 and references therein).”
The relative importance of neighbours and abiotic environmental conditions for population dynamic parameters of two alpine plant species (2005, background): “Global warming may cause a shift towards an increased role of competition in cold environments, because the role of facilitation appears to decrease under warming (this study; Callaway et al. 2002).”
Global shifts towards positive species interactions with increasing environmental stress. (2013, background): “It is generally accepted that facilitation increases with increasing physical stresses like salinity in coastal marshes (e.g. Bertness & Hacker 1994; Bertness & Ewanchuk 2002) and cold in alpine grasslands (e.g. Callaway et al. 2002; Badano et al. 2007).”