A native annual forb locally excludes a closely related introduced species that co-occurs in oak-savanna habitat remnants.

ABSTRACT: Despite the ubiquity of introduced species, their long-term impacts on native plant abundance and diversity remain poorly understood. Coexistence theory offers a tool for advancing this understanding by providing a framework to link short-term individual measurements with long-term population dynamics by directly quantifying the niche and average fitness differences between species. We observed that a pair of closely related and functionally similar annual plants with different origins-native Plectritis congesta and introduced Valerianella locusta-co-occur at the community scale but rarely at the local scale of direct interaction. To test whether niche and/or fitness differences preclude local-scale long-term coexistence, we parameterized models of competitor dynamics with re

SUBMITTER: Johnson JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7532728 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature