Evidence from individual inference for high-dimensional coexistence: long-term experiments on recruitment response.

ABSTRACT:

Background

For competing species to coexist, individuals must compete more with others of the same species than with those of other species. Ecologists search for tradeoffs in how species might partition the environment. The negative correlations among competing species that would be indicative of tradeoffs are rarely observed. A recent analysis showed that evidence for partitioning the environment is available when responses are disaggregated to the individual scale, in terms of the covariance structure of responses to environmental variation. That study did not relate that variation to the variables to which individuals were responding. To understand how this pattern of variation is related to niche variables, we analyzed responses to canopy gaps, long viewed as a key variable re

SUBMITTER: Clark JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3290613 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature