The structure of plant spatial association networks is linked to plant diversity in global drylands.

ABSTRACT: 1. Despite commonly used to unveil the complex structure of interactions within ecological communities and their value to assess their resilience against external disturbances, network analyses have seldom been applied in plant communities. We evaluated how plant-plant spatial association networks vary in global drylands, and assessed whether network structure was related to plant diversity in these ecosystems. 2. We surveyed 185 dryland ecosystems from all continents except Antarctica and built networks using the local spatial association between all the perennial plants species present in the communities studied. Then, for each network we calculated four descriptors of network structure (link density, link weight mean and heterogeneity, and structural balance), and evaluated their signif

SUBMITTER: Saiz H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6054793 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature