Experimental Evidence for the Importance of Light on Understory Grass Communities in a Subtropical Forest.

ABSTRACT: Light is one of the most important environmental filters for forest understory grass communities. It is predicted that light can select species with the same light requirements, resulting in a decrease in species compositional dissimilarity among grass communities experiencing the same light intensity, and an increase in community dissimilarity under variable light intensities. However, these predictions have been questioned recently in light of modern coexistence theories, and evidence for them in natural communities is often indistinguishable from patterns created by dispersal limitation and biotic interactions. To help fill this gap, we sampled 48 understory grass communities that had regenerated from the same soil seed bank in Southern China. Plots were established under a light intens

SUBMITTER: Shen G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7366834 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature