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Root plasticity buffers competition among plants theory meets experimental data

  • Morphological plasticity is a striking characteristic of plants in natural communities. In the context of foraging behavior particularly, root plasticity has been documented for numerous species. Root plasticity is known to mitigate competitive interactions by reducing the overlap of the individuals' rhizospheres. But despite its obvious effect on resource acquisition, plasticity has been generally neglected in previous empirical and theoretical studies estimating interaction intensity among plants. In this study, we developed a semi-mechanistic model that addresses this shortcoming by introducing the idea of compensatory growth into the classical-zone-of influence (ZOI) and field-of-neighborhood (FON) approaches. The model parameters describing the belowground plastic sphere of influence (PSI) were parameterized using data from an accompanying field experiment. Measurements of the uptake of a stable nutrient analogue at distinct distances to the neighboring plants showed that the study species responded plastically to belowgroundMorphological plasticity is a striking characteristic of plants in natural communities. In the context of foraging behavior particularly, root plasticity has been documented for numerous species. Root plasticity is known to mitigate competitive interactions by reducing the overlap of the individuals' rhizospheres. But despite its obvious effect on resource acquisition, plasticity has been generally neglected in previous empirical and theoretical studies estimating interaction intensity among plants. In this study, we developed a semi-mechanistic model that addresses this shortcoming by introducing the idea of compensatory growth into the classical-zone-of influence (ZOI) and field-of-neighborhood (FON) approaches. The model parameters describing the belowground plastic sphere of influence (PSI) were parameterized using data from an accompanying field experiment. Measurements of the uptake of a stable nutrient analogue at distinct distances to the neighboring plants showed that the study species responded plastically to belowground competition by avoiding overlap of individuals' rhizospheres. An unexpected finding was that the sphere of influence of the study species Bromus hordeaceus could be best described by a unimodal function of distance to the plant's center and not with a continuously decreasing function as commonly assumed. We employed the parameterized model to investigate the interplay between plasticity and two other important factors determining the intensity of competitive interactions: overall plant density and the distribution of individuals in space. The simulation results confirm that the reduction of competition intensity due to morphological plasticity strongly depends on the spatial structure of the competitive environment. We advocate the use of semi-mechanistic simulations that explicitly consider morphological plasticity to improve our mechanistic understanding of plant interactions.show moreshow less

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Author details:Katja Schiffers, Katja Tielboerger, Britta TietjenORCiD, Florian JeltschORCiDGND
ISSN:0012-9658
Title of parent work (English):Ecology : a publication of the Ecological Society of America
Publisher:Wiley
Place of publishing:Washington
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2011
Publication year:2011
Release date:2017/03/26
Tag:Bromus hordeaceus; PSI (plastic sphere of influence); competition intensity; morphological plasticity; nutrient analogues; plant density; zone-of-influence model
Volume:92
Issue:3
Number of pages:11
First page:610
Last Page:620
Funding institution:German Science Foundation (DFG) [JE-207/3-2, TI-338/4-1]
Organizational units:Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Biochemie und Biologie
Peer review:Referiert
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