Abstract
Understanding the main determinants of species coexistence across space and time is a central question in ecology. However, ecologists still know little about the scales and conditions at which biotic interactions matter and how these interact with the environment to structure species assemblages. Here we use recent theoretical developments to analyse plant distribution and trait data across Europe and find that plant height clustering is related to both evapotranspiration (ET) and gross primary productivity. This clustering is a signal of interspecies competition between plants, which is most evident in mid-latitude ecoregions, where conditions for growth (reflected in actual ET rates and gross primary productivities) are optimal. Away from this optimum, climate severity probably overrides the effect of competition, or other interactions become increasingly important. Our approach bridges the gap between species-rich competition theories and large-scale species distribution data analysis.
Highlights
Biodiversity theory in community ecology heavily relies on the pioneering work of Volterra [1] and Lotka [2]
By assuming that competition between heterospecifics is driven by signed height differences, we found a significant positive correlation between the degree of clustering and actual ET rates
Our work is based on spatial and stochastic extensions of a type of Lotka–Volterra models where competitive dominance is linked to species traits [22]
Summary
Biodiversity theory in community ecology heavily relies on the pioneering work of Volterra [1] and Lotka [2] These authors provided a general framework to mathematically describe the interacting dynamics of natural populations. 2 For instance, Chesson and colleagues [3,4,5,6] introduce a general framework—the modern coexistence theory for competitive communities—to understand species coexistence in natural communities based on pairwise species differences and their interplay to determine effective competitive (biotic) interactions According to this framework, the balance between stabilizing trait differences and species dominance among competitors is crucial to understand species coexistence. Statistical physics has helped to understand how pairwise species interactions scale up to determine the type of dynamic stability and potential species coexistence in species-rich large systems [16]
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