Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 21, Issue 6, Pages 865-874Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/ele.12954
Keywords
Coexistence; community assembly; demography; fitness; multitrophic interactions; mutualism; niche; pollinators; salinity; spatial structure
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Funding
- European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie [661118-BioFUNC]
- Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Explora Program [CGL2014-61590-EXP]
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Theory argues that both soil conditions and aboveground trophic interactions have equivalent potential to limit or promote plant diversity. However, it remains unexplored how they jointly modify the niche differences stabilising species coexistence and the average fitness differences driving competitive dominance. We conducted a field study in Mediterranean annual grasslands to parameterise population models of six competing plant species. Spatially explicit floral visitor assemblages and soil salinity variation were characterised for each species. Both floral visitors and soil salinity modified species population dynamics via direct changes in seed production and indirect changes in competitive responses. Although the magnitude and sign of these changes were species-specific, floral visitors promoted coexistence at neighbourhood scales, while soil salinity did so over larger scales by changing the superior competitors' identity. Our results show how below and aboveground interactions maintain diversity in heterogeneous landscapes through their opposing effects on the determinants of competitive outcomes.
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