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Effects of spatial pattern and relatedness in an experimental plant community

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Abstract

Many plant species show limited dispersal resulting in spatial and genetic substructures within populations. Consequently, neighbours are often related between each other, resulting in sibling competition. Using seed families of the annuals Capsella bursa-pastoris and Stachys annua we investigated effects of spatial pattern (i.e. random versus aggregated) on total and individual performance at the level of species and seed families under field conditions. At the level of species, we expected that inferior competitors increase, while superior competitors decrease their performance within neighbourhoods of conspecifics. Thus, we expected a species by spatial pattern interaction. Sibling competition, however, might reduce the performance of competitors, when genetically related, rather than non-related individuals are competing. Therefore, aggregations at the level of seed families could decrease the performance of competitors. Alternatively, if the opposite outcome would be observed, kin selection might be hypothesized to have occurred in the past. Because heavy seeds are expected to disperse less than light seeds, we further hypothesized that kin selection might be more likely to occur in superior competitors with heavy, locally dispersed seeds (e.g. Stachys) compared to inferior competitors with light, more distantly dispersed seeds (e.g. Capsella). We found a significant species by spatial pattern interaction. Indeed, the inferior competitor, Capsella, showed increased reproductive biomass production in aggregated compared to random patterns. Whereas, the performance of the superior competitor, Stachys, was to some extent decreased by intraspecific aggregation. Although statistically not significant, effects of intrafamily aggregations tended to be rather negative in Capsella but positive in Stachys. Our results confirmed that spatial patterns affect growth and reproduction of plant species promoting coexistence in plant communities. Although, we could not provide strong evidence for sibling competition or kin selection, our results suggested that competition among relatives was more severe for Capsella (lighter seeds) compared to Stachys (heavier seeds).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Daniel Prati, David Murrell, Jürg Stöcklin and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Furthermore we thank the staff of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) for much appreciated logistic support. This research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant 3100-061572 to Peter Stoll) and supported by a grant of the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft (FAG) Basel to Ursula Monzeglio.

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  1. Department of Environmental Sciences, Section of Conservation Biology, University of Basel, St. Johanns-Vorstadt 10, Basel, Switzerland

    Ursula Monzeglio & Peter Stoll

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  1. Ursula Monzeglio
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  2. Peter Stoll
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Correspondence to Ursula Monzeglio.

Appendix

Appendix

Appendix 1 Results of ANOVA for Capsella bursa-pastoris (top) and Stachys annua (bottom) using all plots
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Monzeglio, U., Stoll, P. Effects of spatial pattern and relatedness in an experimental plant community. Evol Ecol 22, 723–741 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-007-9197-1

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