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Common competitors and rare friends

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 4, pages 8–9 (2020)Cite this article

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Data from hundreds of natural communities show that rare species share more positive associations with each other than abundant species, which tend to be more segregated. These patterns are consistent with facilitation for rare species and competition for abundant ones, and hold true across taxa and biogeographic regions.

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Fig. 1: Common and rare species occur in distinct patterns of negative and positive associations, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Leipzig, Germany

    Jes Hines & Petr Keil

  2. Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany

    Jes Hines

  3. Institute of Computer Science, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany

    Petr Keil

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  1. Jes Hines
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  2. Petr Keil
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Correspondence to Jes Hines.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Hines, J., Keil, P. Common competitors and rare friends. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 8–9 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-1071-3

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