Tales from the underground: Soil heterogeneity and not only above‐ground plant interactions explain fine‐scale species patterns in a Mediterranean dwarf‐shrubland

作者：David S. Pescador, Marcelino de la Cruz, Julia Chacón‐Labella, Javier Pavón‐García, Adrián Escudero · 发表于：Journal of Vegetation Science · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1111/jvs.12859 · 被引用次数：24 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Land Use and Ecosystem Services、Forest ecology and management

Abstract Questions The current paradigm of plant community assembly relies on a set of processes operating at particular spatial scales. It is assumed that as the spatial scale becomes finer, environmental filtering loses its importance in favor of biotic interactions and neutral processes. Thus, at the very fine spatial scale represented by a rectangular plot of 72.25 m 2 in a Mediterranean semiarid dwarf‐shrubland, we ask: (a) are the spatial distributions of individuals of the different species explained by neutral models; (b) are these distributions dependent on above‐ground plant interactions with the dominant species in the community; and/or (c) are they responding to the spatial variation of different soil variables, in a kind of fine‐scale environmental filtering? Location Central Spain. Methods To assess the correlates of fine‐scale (i.e., from 0.05–2.00 m) spatial patterns of the species in the community, we fully mapped all perennial individuals inside the rectangular plot. For each species, we fitted one complete spatial randomness (CSR) model that does not assume spatial heterogeneity and three weighted‐average inhomogeneous Poisson process (IPP) models using six soil covariates, distribution patterns of the four above‐ground dominant plants in the community or both types of covariates. All models were evaluated and compared to select the best‐fitting weighted‐average model. Results We recorded 7,988 individuals of 22 species. Patterns of all species were appropr...