@misc{10481/100012,
year = {2024},
month = {12},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10481/100012},
abstract = {Plant–plant interactions are major determinants of the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems. There is a long tradition in the study of these interactions, their mechanisms and their consequences using experimental, observational and theoretical approaches. Empirical studies overwhelmingly focus at the level of species pairs or small sets of species. Although empirical data on these interactions at the community level are scarce, such studies have gained pace in the last decade. Studying plant–plant interactions at the community level requires knowledge of which species interact with which others, so an ecological networks approach must be incorporated into the basic toolbox of plant community ecology. The concept of recruitment networks (RNs) provides an integrative framework and new insights for many topics in the field of plant community ecology. RNs synthesise the set of canopy–recruit interactions in a local plant assemblage. Canopy–recruit interactions describe which (“canopy”) species allow the recruitment of other species in their vicinity and how. Here we critically review basic concepts of ecological network theory as they apply to RNs. We use RecruitNet, a recently published worldwide data set of canopy–recruit interactions, to describe RN patterns emerging at the interaction, species, and community levels, and relate them to different abiotic gradients. Our results show that RNs can be sampled with high accuracy. The studies included in RecruitNet show a very high mean network completeness (95%), indicating that undetected canopy–recruit pairs must be few and occur very infrequently. Across 351,064 canopy–recruit pairs analysed, the effect of the interaction on recruitment was neutral in an average of 69% of the interactions per community, but the remaining interactions were positive (i.e. facilitative) five times more often than negative (i.e. competitive), and positive interactions had twice the strength of negative ones. Moreover, the frequency and strength of facilitation increases along a climatic aridity gradient worldwide, so the demography of plant communities is increasingly strongly dependent on facilitation as aridity increases. At network level, species can be ascribed to four functional types depending on their position in the network: core, satellite, strict transients and disturbance-dependent transients. This functional structure can allow a rough estimation of which species are more likely to persist. In RecruitNet communities, this functional structure most often departs from random null model expectation and could allow on average the persistence of 77% of the species in a local community. The functional structure of RNs also varies along the aridity gradient, but differently in shrubland than in forest communities. This variation suggests an increase in the probability of species persistence with aridity in forests, while such probability remains roughly constant along the gradient in shrublands. The different functional structure of RNs between forests and shrublands could contribute to explaining their co-occurrence as alternative stable states of the vegetation under the same climatic conditions. This review is not exhaustive of all the topics that can be addressed using the framework of RNs, but instead aims to present some of the interesting insights that it can bring to the field of plant community ecology.},
title = {Key concepts and a world-wide look at plant recruitment networks},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.13177},
author = {Alcántara, Julio M. and Verdú, Miguel and Garrido, Jose L. and Montesinos-Navarro, Alicia and Aizen, Marcelo A. and Alifriqui, Mohamed and Allen, David and Al-Namazi, Ali A. and Armas, Cristina and Bastida, Jesús M. and Bellido, Tono and Paterno, Gustavo B. and Briceño, Herbert and de Oliveira, Ricardo A. C. and Campoy, Josefina G. and Chaieb, Ghassen and Chu, Chengjin and Constantinou, Elena and Delalandre, Léo and Duarte, Milen and Faife-Cabrera, Michel and Fazlioglu, Fatih and Fernando, Edwino S. and Flores, Joel and Flores-Olvera, Hilda and Fodor, Ecaterina and Ganade, Gislene and García, María B. and García-Fayos, Patricio and Gavini, Sabrina S. and Goberna, Marta and Gómez-Aparicio, Lorena and González-Pendás, Enrique and González-Robles, Ana and Ipekdal, Kahraman and Kikvidze, Zaal and Ledo, Alicia and Lendínez, Sandra and Liu, Hanlun and Lloret, Francisco and López, Ramiro P. and López-García, Álvaro and Lortie, Christopher J. and Losapio, Gianalberto and Lutz, James A. and Mális, Frantisek and Manzaneda, Antonio J. and Marcilio-Silva, Vinicius and Michalet, Richard and Molina-Venegas, Rafael and Navarro-Cano, José A. and Novotny, Vojtech and Olesen, Jens M. and Ortiz-Brunel, Juan P. and Pajares-Murgó, Mariona and Perea, Antonio J. and Pérez-Hernández, Vidal and Pérez-Navarro, María A. and Pistón, Nuria and Prieto, Iván and Prieto-Rubio, Jorge and Pugnaire, Francisco Ignacio and Ramírez, Nelson and Retuerto, Rubén and Rey, Pedro J. and Rodriguez-Ginart, Daniel A. and Sánchez-Martín, Ricardo and Tavsanoglu, Çagatay and Tedoradze, Giorgi and Tercero-Araque, Amanda and Tielbörger, Katja and Touzard, Blaise and Tüfekcioglu, Irem and Turkis, Sevda and Usero, Francisco M. and Usta-Baykal, Nurbahar and Valiente-Banuet, Alfonso and Vargas-Colin, Alexa and Vogiatzakis, Ioannis and Zamora, Regino},
}