Fast and furious: Early differences in growth rate drive short-term plant dominance and exclusion under eutrophication.

ABSTRACT: The reduction of plant diversity following eutrophication threatens many ecosystems worldwide. Yet, the mechanisms by which species are lost following nutrient enrichment are still not completely understood, nor are the details of when such mechanisms act during the growing season, which hampers understanding and the development of mitigation strategies.Using a common garden competition experiment, we found that early-season differences in growth rates among five perennial grass species measured in monoculture predicted short-term competitive dominance in pairwise combinations and that the proportion of variance explained was particularly greater under a fertilization treatment.We also examined the role of early-season growth rate in determining the outcome of competition along an experime

SUBMITTER: Zhang P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7520198 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature