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Evolution of facilitation requires diverse communities

Nature Ecology & Evolution 2, 1381–1385 (2018) | Download Citation

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Abstract

Diverse experimental plant communities are more productive than monocultures. The increase of this biodiversity effect over time has been attributed to evolutionary selection for complementarity in mixtures. Here we show that evolutionary selection for enhanced net facilitative plant interactions occurred only in mixtures, while evolutionary selection for reduced net competition occurred in mixtures with mixture coexistence history and monocultures with monoculture coexistence history. Widespread declines in natural and agricultural biodiversity could therefore compromise potential evolution of facilitative interactions, that is, cornerstone processes in nature conservation and the development of sustainable agriculture.

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    Acknowledgements

    This study was financially supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (PP00P3_170645 to C.S. and 130720 to B. Schmid) and the University of Zurich’s University Research Priority Programme on Global Change and Biodiversity. R.W.B. was supported by the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division of the Scottish government through the Strategic Research Programme, 2016–2021. Thanks to D. Trujillo Villegas, L. Oesch, T. Zwimpfer, M. Furler, R. Husi, the gardeners of the Jena Experiment and student helpers for technical assistance.

    Author information

    Affiliations

    1. Department of Environmental Systems Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

      • Christian Schöb

    2. The James Hutton Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen, UK

      • Rob W. Brooker

    3. URPP Global Change and Biodiversity, Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

      • Debra Zuppinger-Dingley

    Authors

    1. Search for Christian Schöb in:

    2. Search for Rob W. Brooker in:

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    Contributions

    C.S. initiated the idea and conducted data analyses. D.Z.-D. designed and carried out the experiment and collected the data. C.S. prepared the manuscript with input from the other authors. All authors discussed the idea and the results before the preparation of the manuscript and conducted the revisions.

    Competing interests

    The authors declare no competing interests.

    Corresponding author

    Correspondence to Christian Schöb.

    Supplementary information

    1. Supplementary Information

      Supplementary Tables 1–4, Supplementary Figures 1–2

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    3. Supplementary Data

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    4. Supplementary Code

      Complete R-code to run all the calculations, statistical analyses and draw the figures

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    DOI

    https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0623-2