Plant size-dependent influence of foliar fungal pathogens promotes diversity through allometric growth.

Abstract

The effect of pathogens on host diversity has attracted much attention in recent years, yet how the influence of pathogens on individual plants scales up to affect community-level host diversity remains unclear. Here, we assessed the effects of foliar fungal pathogens on plant growth and species richness using allometric growth theory in population-level and community-level foliar fungal pathogen exclusion experiments. We calculated growth scaling exponents of 24 species to reveal the intraspecific size-dependent effects of foliar fungal pathogens on plant growth. We also calculated the intercepts to infer the growth rates of relatively larger conspecific individuals. We found that foliar fungal pathogens inhibited the growth of small conspecific individuals more than large individuals, resulting in a positive allometric growth. After foliar fungal pathogen exclusion, species-specific growth scaling exponents and intercepts decreased, but became positively related to species' relative abundance, providing a growth advantage for individuals of abundant species with a higher growth scaling exponent and intercept compared with rare species, and thus reduced species diversity. By adopting allometric growth theory, we elucidate the size-dependent mechanisms through which pathogens regulate species diversity and provide a powerful framework to incorporate antagonistic size-dependent processes in understanding species coexistence.