How does interspecific competition modify the response of grass plants against herbicide treatment? A hierarchical concentration-response approach

Abstract

Ecological interactions are rarely taken into account in environmental risk assessment. The objective of this work was to assess how interspecific competition affects the way plant species react to herbicides and more specifically how it modifies the concentration-response curves that can be built using ecotoxicological bioassays. To do this, we relied on the results of ecotoxicological bioassays on six herbaceous species exposed to isoproturon under two conditions: in presence and in absence of a competitor. At the end of the experiments, eleven endpoints were measured. We modelled these data using a hierarchical modelling framework designed to assess the effects of competition on each of the four parameters of the concentration response curves (e.g. the level of response at the control or the concentration at the inflexion point of the curve) simultaneously for the six species. The modelled effects could be of three types, 1) competition had no effect on the parameter, 2) competition had the same effect on the parameter for all species and 3) competition had a different effect on the parameter for each species. Our main hypothesis was that different species would react differently to competition. Results showed that about a half of the estimated parameters showed a modification under competition pressure among which only a fourth showed a species-specific effect, the three other fourth showing the same effect between the different species. Our initial hypothesis was thus not supported as species

The impact of mixed planting of Poaceae species in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau region on forage yield, soil nutrients, and soil microbial communities

“…Numerous studies have demonstrated that greater niche overlap leads to more intense interspecific competition for limited resources, resulting in reduced community stability and lower yields ( Baillard et al., 2021 ; Reiss and Drinkwater, 2022 ; Glowacki et al., 2023 ). Our study findings reveal that in 2019 (the second year of cultivation), the forage yield of Poa + Puccinellia mixed sowing grasslands was lower than that of monoculture grasslands, with a significantly lower Relative Yield Total (RYT<1.0, P<0.05).…”