Determinants of local plant abundance: relative importance of fitness and stabilizing niche differences (2015-2017)
Petr Dostál, Tereza Klinerová, Karolina Tasevová
Coexistence theory views plant species abundance patterns as a result of species fitness differences (e.g., differences in competitive ability or fecundity) and of stabilizing processes. Species with higher fitness should dominate at the expense of species with lower fitness that should be locally rare or even competitively displaced. However, stabilizing processes, i.e. processes that decrease growth rate with increasing species relative abundance, maintain coexistence of species with different fitness.
In this project we want to assess the relative importance of differences among species in their fitness and stabilization for their local abundance patterns. By including 50 Central European grassland species in a common garden experiment, we want to test whether more abundant species (as derived from databases) are those with higher fitness, or rather those that are less controlled by stabilization. We also want to explore experimentally whether changes in species abundance due to eutrophication are mainly due to changes in fitness differences, or due to modification of stabilization.