Role of asymmetry in competition for light in a model of annual plants

Abstract

We propose and discuss a model describing dynamics of annual plants competing with their nearest neighbours for sunlight. The effect of the competition determines the size, or equivalently, the biomass of each plant and the number of seeds it produces. At the end of a period (year) plants distribute their seeds over the sites in the Moore neighbourhood and then die. They leave their biomass in the form of litter, which hinders germination of the seeds.We show that the dynamical behaviour depends crucially on two parameters—litter reduction rate and the plants’ growth rate. Larger litter reduction rate and smaller growth rate lead to the population of few plants, producing more biomass than when more smaller plants are present and the litter reduction rate is low and growth rate is high. We show that asymmetry in the competition, which could favour bigger plants, have rather weak effect on the dynamical behaviour. The distribution of the biomass depends on the asymmetry. When larger plants receive much more sunlight than the smaller ones, the latter are quite often eliminated from the neighbourhood. For weaker asymmetry smaller plants could survive, producing however less biomass than the larger plants.