English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Competition is a major factor structuring plant communities and controlling their productivity. The functional similarity between the interacting species and the context resource availability are assumed to be most critical factors that modulate the strength, sign, and outcome of plant competition, yet their roles and interactions are subjected to debate. In a glasshouse experiment, we constructed monocultures and bi-specific cultures of three common perennial grasses of Mediterranean drylands, the short grass  Brachypodium retusum  and the tussock grasses  Stipa tenacissima  and  Lygeum spartum , and investigated how the functional similarity between these species modulate their interactions and culture productivity under contrasting levels of water availability. Regardless the degree of functional similarity between the interacting species,  B .  retusum  consistently exhibited a greater competitive ability than the other two species, followed by  L .  spartum , and with  S .  tenacissima  behaving as the weakest competitor. Bi-specific cultures of  B .  retusum  and either  L .  spartum  or  S .  tenacissima  produced higher biomass than the average biomass of the respective monocultures (i.e. overyielding), whereas the combination of the most similar species,  L .  spartum—S .  tenacissima , which exhibited the highest competition symmetry (i.e., the more similar mutual impact), did not show any significant overyielding. Higher water availability increased productivity and promoted transgressive overyielding for the most dissimilar species,  B .  retusum  and  L .  spartum , which however exhibited intermediate competition asymmetry. This study calls attention to the thin line between differences in functional traits and competition asymmetry that could eventually lead to either competitive exclusion or resource partitioning and coexistence.

Functional similarity and competitive symmetry control productivity in mixtures of Mediterranean perennial grasses