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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional Plant Ecology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1539136
This article is part of the Research Topic Diversity and Stability in Aquatic Plant Communities View all 8 articles
Niche partitioning and trait tradeoff strategies enable plants to coexist under interspecific competition in restored wetlands
Provisionally accepted
Shenglin Yang 1 Zhen Yuan 1 Bibi Ye 1* Feng Zhu 1 Xiaoxian Tang 2,3 Rui Gao 3
Zhaosheng Chu 1* Xiaowei Liu 4*- 1 National Engineering Laboratory for Lake Pollution Control and Ecological Restoration, State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment,, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China
- 2 Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China
- 3 Institute of Lake Ecology and Environment, Anhui Provincial Lake Chaohu Administration, Hefei, China
- 4 School of Biology, food and Environment, Hefei University, Hefei, Anhui Province, China
Background: Niche partition and traits tradeoff theory were primary strategies for plants coexistence. However, specific strategies of plants remained to be verified to guide community configuration and biodiversity maintenance in ecological restoration.Methods: The variation of plants composition and niche breath were utilized to examine the temporal and spatial niche partition strategies, respectively. Meanwhile, the chi-square (χ2), Spearman rank correlation coefficient (rij), Ochiai index (OI) were employed to analyze the interspecific relationship of 30 predominant species from species pool of 220 vascular plants. Besides, the Lotka-Volterra model was utilized to reveal the traits tradeoff strategies of predominant species from five vegetation formations. Results: About 62.41% pairs of wetland species were niche partitioned while 37.58% of species pairs were niche overlapped. In temporal scale, 60.5% of species occurred either in spring or autumn while 39.5% occurred in both seasons. Meanwhile, significant change of relative height (RH) and relative coverage (RC) were observed in constructive species and auxiliary species. Height tradeoff strategy (∆RH/∆RC>1), coverage enlarge strategy (∆RH/∆RC<1), or both strategies (∆RH/∆RC=1) observed in wetland plants.Discussion: Our finding testified that the temporal niche partition and traits tradeoff strategies are objectively observable in wetland plants. These findings on coexistence strategies can be used in the configuration of plants communities and the biological control of alien invasive plants.
Keywords: interspecific competition, coexisting strategies, niche partitioning, traits tradeoff;, vascular plants
Received: 03 Dec 2024; Accepted: 21 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Yuan, Ye, Zhu, Tang, Gao, Chu and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Bibi Ye, National Engineering Laboratory for Lake Pollution Control and Ecological Restoration, State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment,, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China
Zhaosheng Chu, National Engineering Laboratory for Lake Pollution Control and Ecological Restoration, State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment,, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China
Xiaowei Liu, School of Biology, food and Environment, Hefei University, Hefei, 130012, Anhui Province, China
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