Facilitation in plant communities: the past, the present, and the future
Authored by Justin MJ Travis, Katja Tielboerger, Merav Seifan, Ragan M Callaway, Richard Michalet, Georges Kunstler, Fernando T Maestre, Rob W Brooker, Christopher L Lortie, Lohengrin A Cavieres, Pierre Liancourt, Fabien Anthelme, Cristina Armas, Lluis Coll, Emmanuel Corcket, Sylvain Delzon, Estelle Forey, Zaal Kikvidze, Johan Olofsson, Francisco I Pugnaire, Constanza L Quiroz, Patrick Saccone, Katja Schiffers, Blaise Touzard
Date Published: 2008
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2007.01295.x
Sponsors:
European Science Foundation
Spanish Ministries
British Ecological Society
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
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Abstract
1. Once neglected, the role of facilitative interactions in plant
communities has received considerable attention in the last two decades, and is now widely recognized. It is timely to consider the progress made
by research in this field.
2. We review the development of plant facilitation research, focusing on
the history of the field, the relationship between plant-plant
interactions and environmental severity gradients, and attempts to
integrate facilitation into mainstream ecological theory. We then
consider future directions for facilitation research.
3. With respect to our fundamental understanding of plant facilitation, clarification of the relationship between interactions and environmental
gradients is central for further progress, and necessitates the design
and implementation of experiments that move beyond the clear limitations
of previous studies.
4. There is substantial scope for exploring indirect facilitative
effects in plant communities, including their impacts on diversity and
evolution, and future studies should connect the degree of
non-transitivity in plant competitive networks to community diversity
and facilitative promotion of species coexistence, and explore how the
role of indirect facilitation varies with environmental severity.
5. Certain ecological modelling approaches (e.g. individual-based
modelling), although thus far largely neglected, provide highly useful
tools for exploring these fundamental processes.
6. Evolutionary responses might result from facilitative interactions, and consideration of facilitation might lead to re-assessment of the
evolution of plant growth forms.
7. Improved understanding of facilitation processes has direct relevance
for the development of tools for ecosystem restoration, and for
improving our understanding of the response of plant species and
communities to environmental change drivers.
8. Attempts to apply our developing ecological knowledge would benefit
from explicit recognition of the potential role of facilitative
plant-plant interactions in the design and interpretation of studies
from the fields of restoration and global change ecology.
9. Synthesis: Plant facilitation research provides new insights into
classic ecological theory and pressing environmental issues. Awareness
and understanding of facilitation should be part of the basic ecological
knowledge of all plant ecologists.
Tags
Climate-change
Biotic interactions
Negative species interactions
Abiotic stress
Relative importance
Positive interactions
Stress-gradient hypothesis
Arid environments
Salt-marsh
plants
Nurse-plants