Evidence of limiting similarity revealed using a conservative assessment of coexistence

Abstract

Citation: Schamp, B. S., and A. M. Jensen. 2019. Evidence of limiting similarity revealed using a conservative assessment of coexistence.Abstract. The concept of limiting similarity is important in ecology because it encapsulates the expectation under niche theory that differences among species are fundamental to coexistence. A growing body of research has tested for evidence of limiting similarity, but only a small number of studies have produced support. Here, using relevant field data, we highlight one possible explanation for the paucity of support for limiting similarity. We test whether coexisting plant species that share bees as pollinators flower asynchronously, a form of temporal niche separation consistent with limiting similarity. Our results provide evidence of limiting similarity, adding to the small collection of null modeling studies that have thus far done so. Our work also provides evidence that temporal niche variation may be an important niche axis that broadly contributes to species coexistence. Finally, we demonstrate that a more conservative assessment of coexistence that includes only individual plants that have achieved reproduction, is consequential in whether we find evidence of significant flowering asynchrony in this study. We conclude that the conservative approach to assessing coexistence that we present here can reduce noise in coexistence data, improving our power to test for evidence consistent with limiting similarity. Using this approach may or may not result in an increase in evidence supporting limiting similarity; however, it will certainly give researchers more confidence that they have not missed existing evidence of limiting similarity.

Smaller species experience mild adversity under shading in an old‐field plant community

“…Our results make it clear that light penetration does affect which small species can find success (i.e., regarding fitness), but its impact on the total abundance and richness of small species is relatively minor. Our results also support the contention that focusing censuses on flowering species can clarify plant community dynamics (Schamp et al, 2016 ; Schamp & Jensen, 2019 ).…”

Bird species co‐occurrence patterns in an alpine environment supports the stress‐gradient hypothesis

“…In a complementary way, we tested for differences in functional dissimilarity between species pairs by employing a more conservative assessment of coexistence. In this second analysis, we only considered those combinations of species whose co-occurrence pattern deviated from that expected at random, that is, those associations identified as significant (positive or negative) according to the probabilistic method (Schamp and Jensen 2019). Under limiting similarity, positively co-occurring pairs (i.e.…”

“…negative associations) has been traditionally interpreted as evidence in favor of interspecific competition as structuring agent in community assembly (Gotelli and Ulrich 2010, Ulrich and Gotelli 2010). However, more recent studies have pointed out that significant spatial associations between species (either negative or positive) are a poor proxy for ecological interactions (Schamp and Jensen 2019, Blanchet et al 2020). Although examining species co‐occurrence patterns constitutes a pervasive research topic in community ecology, most studies so far have adopted a snapshot‐in‐time approach, thus neglecting the temporal variation in species co‐existence and assemblage composition (Tulloch et al 2016).…”

Time is of the essence: A general framework for uncovering temporal structures of communities

“…2020; Jensen et al . 2019; Schamp & Jensen 2019; Tan et al . 2013), or predict the invasion success of species (Alexander & Levine 2019; Godoy & Levine 2014; Wolkovich & Cleland 2011; Zettlemoyer et al .…”