Abstract
Optimizing the effect of management practices on weed population dynamics is challenging due to the difficulties in inferring demographic parameters in seed banks and their response to disturbance. Here, we used a long‐term plant survey between 2006 and 2012 in 46 French vineyards and quantified the effects of management practices (tillage, mowing, and herbicide) on colonization, germination, and seed survival of 30 weed species in relation to their seed mass. To do so, we used a recent statistical approach to reliably estimate demographic parameters for plant populations with a seed bank using time series of presence–absence data, which we extended to account for interspecies variation in the effects of management practices on demographic parameters. Our main finding was that when the level of disturbance increased (i.e., in plots with a higher number of herbicides, tillage, or mowing treatments), colonization success and survival in large‐seeded species increased faster than in small‐seeded species. High disturbance through tillage increased survival in the seed bank of species with high seed mass. The application of herbicides increased germination, survival, and colonization probabilities of species with high seed mass. Mowing, representing habitats more competitive for light, increased the survival of species with high seed mass. Overall, the strong relationships between the effects of management practices and seed mass provide an indicator for predicting the dynamics of weed communities under disturbance.
Highlights
Managing weeds is one of the most challenging issues faced by farmers, as weeds can cause significant reductions in crop growth and yields, especially in resource-limited agroecosystems (Hembree & Lanini, 2006)
Our results showed that herbicide application increased large-seeded species germination probability and survival in seed bank
In the last decades the vineyard has suffered an intensive management with a high mechanization and/or use of herbicides, which affect species richness and abundance (Fried et al, 2019)
Summary
Managing weeds is one of the most challenging issues faced by farmers, as weeds can cause significant reductions in crop growth and yields, especially in resource-limited agroecosystems (Hembree & Lanini, 2006). A hidden Markov model (HMM) was recently developed to estimate colonization, germination, and seed bank survival from 1 year to the without addition of new seeds, using above-ground presence– absence observations (Pluntz et al, 2018) We extend this HMM with a multilevel model in a Bayesian framework (e.g., Qian et al, 2010) (aka hierarchical Bayesian modeling) to determine interspecies variation in the effects of management practices on weed demography at both the plot and species level, while explicitly considering the seed bank. Our third hypothesis is that the frequency of disturbance will increase seed survival in the soil as seedling of large-seeded species should better survive hazards like deep shade or physical damage (Westoby et al, 1992) To explore these hypotheses, we used a unique data set covering 46 vineyard plots in France (Champagne, Beaujolais, and Languedoc wine-growing areas) with 883 flora surveys performed between 2006 and 2012. We tested whether interspecific variation in the effects of management practices (tillage, mowing and herbicide use) on demographic parameters could be explained by seed mass
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