Contextualizing the ecology of plant-plant interactions and constructive networks.

ABSTRACT: Botanical concepts have traditionally viewed the environment as a static box containing plants. In this box, plants compete with one another and act as passive resource consumers subjected to the environment in a top-down manner. This entails that plants have only negative effects on other plants and have no influence on the environment. By contrast, there is increasing evidence that plants have positive, bottom-up engineering effects and diversity effects on other plants and on the environment. Here, to overcome the limitations of top-down environmental control, antagonistic-only and pairwise interactions, I propose the concept of constructive networks. Constructive networks unify niche construction and network theory recognizing that (i) plants have manifold ecological functions and impa

SUBMITTER: Losapio G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10414809 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature