Abstract
The importance of ontogeny and the degree of abiotic stress in determining the interplay between facilitation and competition is well known. However, their joint effect on the outcome of plant interactions remains poorly understood, especially when a continuous gradient of abiotic stress is considered. Our objective was to evaluate the frequency of association of individuals of Clusia criuva with typical coastal dune species across a gradient of water stress and how this association affects the growth of juveniles and sub-adults. The study was performed in a coastal dune region in South Brazil, where the sandy soil promotes severe water stress. One-year growth of 293 individuals and their distance to the closest humid slacks were measured. This distance is a good surrogate for water stress, since slacks represent proximity to groundwater. The proportion of associated individuals increased with abiotic stress in both ontogenetic stages, but was always greater for juveniles. This suggests that association is progressively more important to guarantee survival as abiotic stress increases. Nonetheless, the benefit of neighbors to growth decreased with abiotic stress, and associated plants grew less than isolated ones in harsher environments. This was mainly true for juveniles, since the height growth of sub-adults was not affected by association or abiotic stress. In our study, facilitation became more intense with environmental severity, increasing survival, although competition also became more influent, reducing growth particularly for younger plants. This demonstrates that ontogenetic stage and abiotic stress must be considered simultaneously in order to better understand interactions among plants.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Araujo DSD, Scarano FR (2007) Biogeographic features of Clusia, with emphasis on South American and especially Brazilian species. In: Lüttge U (ed) Clusia: a woody neotropical genus of remarkable plasticity and diversity. Springer, Berlin, pp 31–54
Armas C, Pugnaire FI (2005) Plant interactions govern population dynamics in a semi-arid plant community. J Ecol 93:978–989
Bell AD, Bryan A (1991) Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Berkowitz AR, Canham CD, Kelly VR (1995) Competition vs facilitation of tree seedling growth and survival in early successional communities. Ecology 76:1156–1168
Bertness MD, Callaway R (1994) Positive interactions in communities. Trends Ecol Evol 9:191–193
Brooker RW, Maestre FT, Callaway RM, Lortie CL, Cavieres LA, Kunstler G, Liancourt P, Tielborger K, Travis JMJ, Anthelme F, Armas C, Coll L, Corcket E, Delzon S, Forey E, Kikvidze Z, Olofsson J, Pugnaire F, Quiroz CL, Saccone P, Schiffers K, Seifan M, Touzard B, Michalet R (2008) Facilitation in plant communities: the past, the present, and the future. J Ecol 96:18–34
Brose U, Tielbörger K (2005) Subtle differences in environmental stress along a flooding gradient affect the importance of inter-specific competition in an annual plant community. Plant Ecol 178:51–59
Brower JE, Zar JH, von Ende CN (1998) Field and laboratory methods for general ecology. McGraw-Hill, Boston
Callaway RM (1995) Positive interactions among plants. Bot Rev 61:306–349
Callaway RM, Walker LR (1997) Competition and facilitation: a synthetic approach to interactions in plant communities. Ecology 78:1958–1965
Callaway RM, Brooker RW, Choler P, Kikvidze Z, Lortie CJ, Michalet R, Paolini L, Pugnaire FI, Newingham B, Aschehoug ET, Armas C, Kikodze D, Cook BJ (2002) Positive interactions among alpine plants increase with stress. Nature 417:844–848
Caruso MML (1990) O desmatamento na Ilha de Santa Catarina de 1500 aos anos atuais. UFSC, Florianópolis
Correia CMC, Dias ATC, Scarano FR (2010) Plant-plant associations and population structure of four woody plant species in a patchy coastal vegetation of Southeastern Brazil. Braz J Bot 33:607–613
Crawley M (1997) Plant ecology. Wiley, New York
Dias ATC, Scarano FR (2007) Clusia as a nurse plant. In: Lüttge U (ed) Clusia: a woody neotropical genus of remarkable plasticity and diversity. Springer, Berlin, pp 55–72
ESRI (2010) ArcGIS 10.0. ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute), Redlands
Fialho RF (1990) Seed dispersal by a lizard and a tree frog: effect of dispersal rate on seed survivorship. Biotropica 22:423–424
García-Fayos P, Gasque M (2002) Consequences of a severe drought on spatial patterns of woody plants in a two-phase mosaic steppe of Stipa tenacissima L. J Arid Environ 52:199–208
Grime J (1977) Evidence for the existence of three primary strategies in plants and its relevance to ecological and evolutionary theory. Am Nat 111:1169–1194
Grootjans AP, Adema EB, Bekker RM, Lammerts EJ (2008) Why coastal dune slacks sustain a high biodiversity coastal dunes. In: Martınez ML, Psuty NP (eds) Coastal dunes. Ecology and conservation. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 85–101
Hay JD, Lacerda LD, Tan AL (1981) Soil cation increase in a tropical sand dune ecosystem due to a terrestrial bromeliad. Ecology 62:1392–1395
Holmgren M, Scheffer M, Huston MA (1997) The interplay of facilitation and competition in plant communities. Ecology 78:1966–1975
Hudson BD (1994) Soil organic matter and available water capacity. J Soil Water Conserv 49:189–194
Kachi N, Hirose T (1983) Limiting nutrients for plant growth in coastal sand dune soils. J Ecol 71:937–944
Kawai T, Tokeshi M (2007) Testing the facilitation-competition paradigm under the stress-gradient hypothesis: decoupling multiple stress factors. Proc R Soc B 274:2503–2508
Leger EA, Espeland EK (2010) The shifting balance of facilitation and competition affects the outcome of intra- and interspecific interactions over the life history of California grassland annuals. Plant Ecol 208:333–345
Lemeshow S, Levy PS (1999) Sampling of populations: methods and applications. Wiley, New York
Maestre FT, Cortina J (2004) Do positive interactions increase with abiotic stress? A test from a semi-arid steppe. Proc R Soc B 271:S331–S333
Maestre FT, Callaway RM, Valladares F, Lortie CJ (2009) Refining the stress-gradient hypothesis for competition and facilitation in plant communities. J Ecol 97:199–205
Maun MA (1994) Adaptations enhancing survival and establishment of seedlings on coastal dune systems. Vegetatio 111:59–70
Miriti MN (2006) Ontogenetic shift from facilitation to competition in a desert shrub. J Ecol 94:973–979
Mou P, Jones RH, Mitchell RJ, Zutter B (1995) Spatial distribution of roots in sweetgum and loblolly pine monocultures and relations with above-ground biomass and soil nutrients. Funct Ecol 9:689–699
Prevosto B, Monnier Y, Ripert C, Fernandez C (2012) To what extent do time, species identity and selected plant response variables influence woody plant interactions? J Appl Ecol 49:1344–1355
R Core Team (2012) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna
Ramos C, García MR (2008) Dinámica del daño foliar en plántulas de Drimys granadensis (Winteraceae) y Clusia multiflora (Clusiaceae) en el bosque altoandino de la Cordillera Oriental colombiana. Rev Biol Trop 56:1087–1100
Sampaio MC, Perissé LE, Oliveira GA, Rios RI (2002) The contrasting clonal architecture of two bromeliads from sandy coastal plains in Brazil. Flora 197:443–451
Scarano FR (2002) Structure, function and floristic relationships of plant communities in stressful habitats marginal to the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest. Ann Bot 90:517–524
Schiffers K, Tielbörger K (2006) Ontogenetic shifts in interactions among annual plants. J Ecol 94:336–341
Schmitt AK, Lee HSJ, Lüttge U (1988) The response of the C3-CAM tree, Clusia rosea, to light and water stress. J Exp Bot 39:1581–1590
Simões-Jesus MF, Castellani TT (2007) Avaliação do potencial facilitador de Eucalyptus sp. na restinga da Praia da Joaquina, Ilha de Santa Catarina, SC. Biotemas 20:27–35
Soliveres S, DeSoto L, Maestre FT, Olano JM (2010) Spatio-temporal heterogeneity in abiotic factors modulate multiple ontogenetic shifts between competition and facilitation. Perspect Plant Ecol Evol Syst 12:227–234
Sthultz CM, Gehring CA, Whitham TG (2007) Shifts from competition to facilitation between a foundation tree and a pioneer shrub across spatial and temporal scales in a semiarid woodland. New Phytol 173:135–145
Tielbörger K, Kadmon R (2000) Temporal environmental variation tips the balance between facilitation and interference in desert plants. Ecology 81:1544–1553
Venables WN, Ripley BD (2002) Modern applied statistics with S, 4th edn. Springer, New York
Zheng M, Lai L, Jiang L, An P, Yu Y, Zheng Y, Shimizu H, Baskin JM, Baskin CC (2012) Moderate water supply and partial sand burial increase relative growth rate of two Artemisia species in an inland sandy land. J Arid Environ 85:105–113
Acknowledgments
We thank an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript. We also gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided in the form of a scholarship by the Brazilian Education Council (CAPES).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Beduschi, T., Castellani, T.T. Friends or Foes? Interplay of facilitation and competition depends on the interaction between abiotic stress and ontogenetic stage. Plant Ecol 214, 1485–1492 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-013-0269-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-013-0269-8