Evidence of Facilitation Cascade Processes as Drivers of Successional Patterns of Ecosystem Engineers at the Upper Altitudinal Limit of the Dry Puna.

ABSTRACT: Facilitation processes constitute basic elements of vegetation dynamics in harsh systems. Recent studies in tropical alpine environments demonstrated how pioneer plant species defined as "ecosystem engineers" are capable of enhancing landscape-level richness by adding new species to the community through the modification of microhabitats, and also provided hints about the alternation of different ecosystem engineers over time. Nevertheless, most of the existing works analysed different ecosystem engineers separately, without considering the interaction of different ecosystem engineers. Focusing on the altitudinal limit of Peruvian Dry Puna vegetation, we hypothesized that positive interactions structure plant communities by facilitation cascades involving different ecosystem engineers, det

SUBMITTER: Malatesta L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5130256 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature