Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies · Observational data analysis

How many ways do plants compete?

Paper: The dimensionality of plant–plant competition
Stouffer et al. · Nature Communications 2026 · doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-76980-9

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How many ways do plants compete? 12 plant communities had far fewer ways to compete than they had species. On average, one axis explained 86.7% of the variation in plant interactions. In two experiments, changing conditions reshuffled competitive roles.

AI-assisted summary with an AI voice, not reviewed by the authors. Made from the paper under its CC BY licence. Read the paper before relying on a finding. Keywords: plant competition, niche differentiation, species coexistence, plant assemblages, environmental heterogeneity, species diversity maintenance.