Species diversity promotes facilitation under stressful conditions

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dc.contributor.authorDanet, Alain
dc.contributor.authorBautista, Susana
dc.contributor.authorGenin, Alexandre
dc.contributor.authorBeckerman, Andrew P.
dc.contributor.authorAnthelme, Fabien
dc.contributor.authorKefi, Sonia
dc.date.accessioned2025-01-20T17:05:40Z
dc.date.available2025-01-20T17:05:40Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.description.abstractClimate change is expected to lead to a drier world, with more frequent and severe droughts, constituting a growing threat to biodiversity, especially in drylands. Positive plant-plant interactions, such as nurse plants facilitating beneficiary communities in their understorey, could mitigate such climate-induced stress. However, testing the real-world relevance of nurse facilitation under drought requires accounting for interactions within the diverse beneficiary communities, which may reduce, or amplify the buffering effect of a nurse. Here, we investigated when and how the interactions among nurse plants and beneficiary community members buffered drought effects in a Mediterranean semiarid abandoned cropland. We transplanted sapling beneficiary communities of either one or three species either under a nurse or in open microsites for different soil moisture levels through watering. Net facilitative effects on survival and biomass were only observed when beneficiary communities were species-diverse and under drought (without watering), meaning that under these conditions, facilitation provided by the nurse had larger positive effects than the negative effects stemming from competition with the nurse and among beneficiary species. Nurses appear to be generating these increases in survival and biomass in drought conditions via two mechanisms commonly associated with watering in open sites: they generate complementarity among the beneficiaries and shift traits to lower stress profiles. Contrasting with watering, which was found to enhance competitive hierarchy, our study shows that nurses appear to alter species dominance, favouring the less competitive species. Our results highlight three mechanisms (complementarity, competitive dominance, and trait plasticity) by which nurse species could mitigate the loss of biodiversity and biomass production due to water stress. Maintaining and supporting nurse species is thus a potentially pivotal approach in the face of projected increase in drought conditions for many drylands across the world.Keywords: biodiversity, dryland, ecosystem functioning, facilitation, functional traits, plant-plant interactions
dc.fuente.origenWOS
dc.identifier.doi10.1111/oik.10303
dc.identifier.eissn1600-0706
dc.identifier.issn0030-1299
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1111/oik.10303
dc.identifier.urihttps://repositorio.uc.cl/handle/11534/90741
dc.identifier.wosidWOS:001206141700001
dc.issue.numero9
dc.language.isoen
dc.revistaOikos
dc.rightsacceso restringido
dc.subject.ods14 Life Below Water
dc.subject.ods15 Life on Land
dc.subject.odspa14 Vida submarina
dc.subject.odspa15 Vida de ecosistemas terrestres
dc.titleSpecies diversity promotes facilitation under stressful conditions
dc.typeartículo
dc.volumen2024
sipa.indexWOS
sipa.trazabilidadWOS;2025-01-12
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