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19 results for “nurse plant”
Effects of nurse shrubs and biochar on planted conifer seedling survival and growth in a high-severity burn patch in New Mexico, USA
<p>The synergistic effects of widespread high-severity wildfire and anthropogenic climate change are driving large-scale vegetation conversion. In the southwestern United States, areas that were once dominated by conifer forests are now shrub- or grasslands after high-severity wildfire, an ecosystem conversion that could be permanent without human intervention. Yet, the reforestation of these landscapes is rarely successful, with a mean planted seedling survival of just 25 %. Given these low rates, we carried out a planting experiment to quantify the impacts of biochar as a soil amendment and shrubs as nurse plants on planted conifer seedling survival and growth following high-severity wildfire. We planted 1200 seedlings of three species (<em>Pinus</em> <em>ponderosa</em>, <em>P. strobiformis</em>, and <em>Pseudotsuga</em> <em>menziesii</em>) in a 2-ha area within the footprint of the Las Conchas fire in New Mexico, USA. We used four treatments: under shrubs, or in the open and with or without biochar in a full-factorial design. We found that planting tree seedlings underneath shrubs increased tree seedling survival by 46 % after 3 years, with some marginal evidence that shrubs inhibited seedling diameter growth (mean <em>R<sup>2</sup></em> = 0.08). The addition of biochar increased seedling survival by 11 % but had no effect on seedling growth. Our study suggests that planted seedling survival in post-wildfire areas can be increased by planting under shrubs in soil amended with biochar. The widespread adoption of these methods may improve the success rates of post-wildfire reforestation efforts in semi-arid areas, regaining some of the ecosystem services lost to high-severity wildfire.</p>
Effects of nurse shrubs and biochar on planted conifer seedling survival and growth in a high-severity burn patch in New Mexico, USA
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Contrasting soil- and canopy-nurse effects on dependent species in metalliferous systems may be explained by dominant plant functional strategies
<p>Plant-plant interaction studies in metalliferous systems have focused either on the role of facilitation or on the negative effects of elemental allelopathy. However, no studies have investigated both of these effects in the same system, and their relationships with the functional strategy of the nurse species, although this is crucial for the ecological restoration of polluted sites.</p> <p>We assessed the effects of two dominant nurse species, with apparent contrasting strategies, on two target species on a slag heap in the Pyrenees (France). We quantified both long-term soil-engineering and short-term canopy effects on the growth of two target species. We also measured morphological traits and leaf metal concentration of the two nurse species and their effects on air moisture, temperature, and vapour pressure deficit.</p> <p>Nurse functional strategies, as inferred from morphological traits and leaf metal concentration seem to drive their long-term soil engineering effects on target species: Gypsophila repens, the relatively larger and more exploitative species with high leaf metal concentration, had negative long-term effects likely due to elemental allelopathy, whereas Minuartia verna, the relatively smaller and more conservative species with a lower amount of metals in leaves, had neutral long-term effects. Although Gypsophila repens had a slightly stronger positive effect on microclimate than Minuartia verna, this did not turn into higher short-term effects for the target species.</p> <p>Our study highlights the possible role of the nurse's functional strategies in driving the relative importance of long and short-term effects on target species in metalliferous systems. This knowledge is key to increasing our understanding of plant-plant interaction outcomes in metalliferous systems and our ability to restore polluted environments.</p>
Nurse plant shading is more important than soil fertility for dryland plant recruitment and diversity
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Contrasting soil- and canopy-nurse effects on dependent species in metalliferous systems may be explained by dominant plant functional strategies
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Data from: Nurse species and indirect facilitation through grazing drive plant community functional traits in tropical alpine peatlands
Facilitation among plants mediated by grazers occurs when an unpalatable plant extends its protection against grazing to another plant. This type of indirect facilitation impacts species coexistence and ecosystem functioning in a large array of ecosystems worldwide. It has nonetheless generally been understudied so far in comparison with the role played by direct facilitation among plants. We aimed at providing original data on indirect facilitation at the community scale to determine the extent to which indirect facilitation mediated by grazers can shape plant communities. Such experimental data are expected to contribute to refining the conceptual framework on plant–plant–herbivore interactions in stressful environments. We set up a 2-year grazing exclusion experiment in tropical alpine peatlands in Bolivia. Those ecosystems depend entirely on a few, structuring cushion-forming plants (hereafter referred to as "nurse" species), in which associated plant communities develop. Fences have been set over two nurse species with different strategies to cope with grazing (direct vs. indirect defenses), which are expected to lead to different intensities of indirect facilitation for the associated communities. We collected functional traits which are known to vary according to grazing pressure (LDMC, leaf thickness, and maximum height), on both the nurse and their associated plant communities in grazed (and therefore indirect facilitation as well) and ungrazed conditions. We found that the effect of indirectly facilitated on the associated plant communities depended on the functional trait considered. Indirect facilitation decreased the effects of grazing on species relative abundance, mean LDMC, and the convergence of the maximum height distribution of the associated communities, but did not affect mean height or cover. The identity of the nurse species and grazing jointly affected the structure of the associated plant community through indirect facilitation. Our results together with the existing literature suggest that the "grazer–nurse–beneficiary" interaction module can be more complex than expected when evaluated in the field.
Data from: Plant life history stage and nurse age change the development of ecological networks in an arid ecosystem
Understanding how ecological networks are organised over the course of an organism's lifetime is crucial for predicting the dynamics of interacting populations and communities across temporal scales. However, most studies so far considered only one life history stage at a time, such as adult, when studying networks of interacting species. Therefore, knowledge about how multiple life history stages affect the development and stability of plant–plant association networks is lacking. We measured the understory adult plant community and the soil seed bank across a plant age gradient of the nurse shrub Retama sphaerocarpa in an arid ecosystem in Spain. Using a multilayer network approach, we built adult understory–nurse and seed bank–nurse networks and analysed how network nestedness, species' role, and species specificity varied between them and with nurse plant age. We found that seed bank and adult understory networks changed depending on nurse plant age in two different ways. With increasing nurse plant age, adult understory networks became significantly more nested than seed bank networks. The nested architecture of seed bank networks was therefore a poor predictor of adult understory network nestedness. The contribution and specificity of species to network nestedness increased with increasing nurse plant age more in the adult understory than in seed bank networks, despite high species turnover. Our data show that life history and ontogeny affect the development of plant–plant association networks. Niche construction and environmental filtering along nurse ontogeny seem pivotal mechanisms structuring adult understory networks while the assembly of seed bank networks seems rather stochastic. We highlight the importance of mature plant communities for maintaining rare species populations and supporting the stability of ecological communities through time.
Data from: Differences in the fungal communities nursed by two genetic groups of the alpine cushion plant, Silene acaulis
Foundation plants shape the composition of local biotic communities and abiotic environments, but the impact of a plant's intraspecific variations on these processes is poorly understood. We examined these links in the alpine cushion moss campion (Silene acaulis) on two neighboring mountain ranges in the French Alps. Genotyping of cushion plants revealed two genetic clusters matching known subspecies. The exscapa subspecies was found on both limestone and granite while the longiscapa one was only found on limestone. Even on similar limestone bedrock, cushion soils from the two S. acaulis subspecies deeply differed in their impact on soil abiotic conditions. They further strikingly differed from each other and from the surrounding bare soils in fungal community composition. Plant genotype variations accounted for a large part of the fungal composition variability in cushion soils, even when considering geography or soil chemistry, and particularly for the dominant molecular operational taxonomic units (MOTUs). Both saprophytic and biotrophic fungal taxa were related to the MOTUs recurrently associated with a single plant genetic cluster. Moreover, the putative phytopathogens were abundant, and within the same genus (Cladosporium) or species (Pyrenopeziza brassicae), MOTUs showing specificity for each plant subspecies were found. Our study highlights the combined influences of bedrock and plant genotype on fungal recruitment into cushion soils and suggests the coexistence of two mechanisms, an indirect selection resulting from the colonization of an engineered soil by free-living saprobes, and a direct selection resulting from direct plant-fungi interactions.
Restored legume acts as a 'nurse' to facilitate plant compensatory growth and biomass production in mown grasslands
<p>Legume restoration was conducted in a temperate grassland in Hulunbuir, northeastern Inner Mongolia, China, by reseeding native legumes. This process was followed by annual mowing and phosphorus (P) application over a seven-year period (2014–2020). Throughout this period, we measured aboveground biomass, plant diversity, and the relative biomass of five functional plant groups each year. In 2020, we assessed six functional traits of 15 common plant species in both legume-restored and naturally-restored grasslands, respectively. Using these trait values and relative biomass data, we calculated community-weighted means and functional diversity indices for each plot.</p> <p> </p>
Data from: Differences in the fungal communities nursed by two genetic groups of the alpine cushion plant, Silene acaulis
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Data from: Plant-soil feedback drives the nursing effect on Sitka spruce
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Data from: The association between a nurse cushion plant and a cluster-root bearing tree species alters the plant community structure
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Data from: Nurse species and indirect facilitation through grazing drive plant community functional traits in tropical alpine peatlands
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Data from: Plant life history stage and nurse age change the development of ecological networks in an arid ecosystem
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Data from: Phenotypic effects of the nurse Thylacospermum caespitosum on dependent plant species along regional climate stress gradients
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Plant-plant interactions change during succession on nurse logs in a northern temperate rainforest
Plant-plant interactions change through succession from facilitative to competitive. At early stages of succession, early-colonizing plants can increase the survival and reproductive output of other plants by ameliorating disturbance and stressful conditions. At later stages of succession, plant interactions are more competitive as plants put more energy towards growth and reproduction. In northern temperate rainforests, gap dynamics result in tree falls that facilitate tree regeneration (nurse logs) and bryophyte succession. How bryophyte-tree seedling interactions vary through log succession remains unclear. We examined the relationships of tree seedlings, bryophyte community composition, bryophyte depth, and percent canopy cover in 166 0.5 m x 1.0 m plots on nurse logs and the forest floor in the Hoh rainforest in Washington, USA to test the hypothesis that bryophyte-tree seedling interactions change from facilitative to competitive as the log decays. Tree seedling density was highest on young logs with early-colonizing bryophyte species (e.g., Rhizomnium glabrescens), and lowest on decayed logs with Hylocomium splendens, a long-lived moss that reaches depths >20 cm. As a result, bryophyte depth increased with nurse log decay and was negatively associated with tree seedling density. Tree seedling density was 4.6x higher on nurse logs than on the forest floor, which was likely due to competitive exclusion by forest floor plants, such as H. splendens. Nurse logs had 17 species of bryophytes while the forest floor had six, indicating that nurse logs contribute to maintaining bryophyte diversity. Nurse logs enable both tree seedlings and smaller bryophyte species to avoid competition with forest floor plants, including the dominant bryophyte, H. splendens. H. splendens is likely a widespread driver of plant community structure given its dominance in northern temperate forests. Our findings indicate that plant-plant interactions shift with succession on nurse logs from facilitative to competitive and, thus, influence forest community structure and dynamics. --
Plant-plant interactions change during succession on nurse logs in a northern temperate rainforest
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Data from: Trait-based selection of nurse plants to restore ecosystem functions in mine tailings
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Data from: Additive effects of nurse and facilitated plants on ecosystem functions
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Allen Brain Atlas
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DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
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OpenNeuro
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