Facilitation costs and benefits function simultaneously on stress gradients for animals.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the variation in species interactions along environmental stress gradients is crucial for making robust ecological predictions about community responses to changing environmental conditions. The facilitation-competition framework has provided a strong basis for predictions (e.g. the stress-gradient hypothesis, SGH), yet the mechanisms behind patterns in animal interactions on stress gradients are poorly explored in particular for mobile animals. Here, we proposed a conceptual framework modelling changes in facilitation costs and benefits along stress gradients and experimentally tested this framework by measuring fitness outcomes of benefactor-beneficiary interactions across resource quality levels. Three arthropod consumer models from a broad array of environmental condition

SUBMITTER: Dangles O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6125904 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature