Conditional love? Co-occurrence patterns of drought-sensitive species in European grasslands are consistent with the stress-gradient hypothesis.

ABSTRACT:

Aim

The stress-gradient hypothesis (SGH) postulates that species interactions shift from negative to positive with increasing abiotic stress. Interactions between species are increasingly being recognized as important drivers of species distributions, but it is still unclear whether stress-induced changes in interactions affect continental-to-global scale species distributions. Here, we tested whether associations of vascular plant species in dry grasslands in Europe follow the SGH along a climatic water deficit (CWD) gradient across the continent.

Location

Dry grasslands in Europe.

Time period

Present.

Major taxa studied

Vascular plants.

Methods

We built a context-dependent joint species distribution model (JSDM) to estimate the residual associations (i

SUBMITTER: de Jonge MMJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8362124 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature