10.5061/DRYAD.2656V
Louthan, Allison M.
University of Colorado Boulder
Doak, Daniel F.
University of Colorado Boulder
Goheen, Jacob R.
University of Wyoming
Palmer, Todd M.
University of Florida
Pringle, Robert M.
Princeton University
Data from: Mechanisms of plant–plant interactions: concealment from
herbivores is more important than abiotic-stress mediation in an African
savannah
Dryad
dataset
2014
Hibiscus meyeri
2014-02-24T14:48:59Z
2014-02-24T14:48:59Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.2647
173638 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Recent work on facilitative plant–plant interactions has emphasized the
importance of neighbours’ amelioration of abiotic stress, but the
facilitative effects of neighbours in reducing plant apparency to
herbivores have received less attention. Whereas theory on stress
reduction predicts that competition should be more important in less
stressful conditions, with facilitation becoming more important in harsh
environments, apparency theory suggests that facilitation should be
greater in the presence of herbivores, where it is disadvantageous to be
conspicuous regardless of abiotic stress level. We tested the relative
strength of neighbours’ stress reduction versus apparency reduction on
survival, growth, reproduction and lifetime fitness of Hibiscus meyeri, a
common forb in central Kenya, using neighbour removals conducted inside
and outside large-herbivore exclosures replicated in arid and mesic sites.
In the absence of herbivores, neighbours competed with H. meyeri in mesic
areas and facilitated H. meyeri in arid areas, as predicted by
stress-reduction mechanisms. By contrast, neighbours facilitated H. meyeri
in the presence of herbivory, regardless of aridity level, consistent with
plant apparency. Our results show that the facilitative effects arising
from plant apparency are stronger than the effects arising from abiotic
stress reduction in this system, suggesting that plant-apparency effects
may be particularly important in systems with extant large-herbivore
communities.
Hibiscus meyeri growth, survival, and reproductionrepeated measurements of
height, basal area, reproductive structure number (allrep), fruit, between
2011 and 2012, for Hibiscus meyeri plants subject to either neighbor
removal treatments (NR) or unmanipuated control (control; indicated in the
trmtAL column), at a variety of aridity levels (N, arid; S, mesic;
indicated in the level column) and herbivore exclosure treatments (open
control, "CONT" and full exclosure, "LMH"; indicated
in the trmtUHURU column).datafile.txt
Kenya