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Does the phytotoxic shrub Heterothalamus psiadioides affect a plant community through allelopathy?

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Abstract

Phytotoxicity has often been proposed as evidence of allelopathy. However, few studies have investigated allelopathy in natural field conditions. In South Brazilian grasslands, Heterothalamus psiadioides, a shrub establishing in dense stands, has shown strong phytotoxicity in laboratory assays. We conducted a field study to evaluate if this species also negatively affects a plant community through allelopathy. At a shrubland site, we established a phytotoxicity gradient, consisting of plots with H. psiadioides, plots with Baccharis patens—a shrub with minimal phytotoxicity—and plots without shrubs (no phytotoxicity). We assessed plant species cover, biomass, number of seedlings, diversity, richness, and plant community characteristics. Our study did not show evidences of plant inhibition near the phytotoxic species. We observed higher plant richness and diversity in plots with H. psiadioides than in plots with B. patens and without shrubs. The highest diversity near H. psiadioides was associated with greater forb cover, due to lower cover of dominant grasses. Differences in light incidence accounted for vegetation patterns more than allelopathic activity. Therefore, our study showed that the allelopathic potential of the evaluated species was overestimated based only on laboratory studies. We emphasize the relevance of conducting allelopathy studies in field and of having a similar species with low phytotoxicity in this kind of study. Results based only on laboratory assays and visual evidence of patterns in field may be misleading and may lead to an overestimation of the role of allelopathy in plant communities.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) for the MSc scholarship granted to the first author. We are grateful to MSc Pedro Joel Silva da Silva Filho, MSc Diana Carla Lazarotto, and Rosângela Gonçalves Rolim for their help with field work and species identification. We also thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions on the manuscript.

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  1. Pedro M. A. Ferreira

    Present address: Faculdade de Biociências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Bento Gonçalves 9500, Porto Alegre, RS, CEP 91501970, Brazil

    Eliane R. da Silva, Gerhard E. Overbeck & Geraldo L. G. Soares

  2. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Botânica, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

    Pedro M. A. Ferreira

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  1. Eliane R. da Silva
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Correspondence to Eliane R. da Silva.

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Communicated by S. J. Meiners.

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da Silva, E.R., Ferreira, P.M.A., Overbeck, G.E. et al. Does the phytotoxic shrub Heterothalamus psiadioides affect a plant community through allelopathy?. Plant Ecol 216, 87–97 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-014-0418-8

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