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BEES Seminar
Dr. Brenton Ladd, Post Doctoral Fellow in Plant Ecology,
School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW.
Thursday 27th July at 4.00pm in Room 456
Life in the N-Dimensional-Hyper-Volume: resource availability and the intensity of biotic interactions.
- We studied the establishment of tree seedlings in Mediterranean-type old fields in South Australia in different biotic environments and under different levels of resource availability. Specifically we:
- tested for a logarithmic relationship between the relative intensity of competition (RCI) and resource availability,
- assessed the potential for confounding resource competition with invertebrate herbivory, and
- assessed how the architecture of a plant community could affect the relationship between resource availability and RCI.
- Our glasshouse experiment showed that RCI increased with resource availability at low levels of resources, but not at higher levels, consistent with a logarithmic relationship.
- The effects of resource competition and invertebrate herbivory were heavily confounded in the field experiment.
- Plant architecture significantly affected the behaviour and abundance of invertebrates and we therefore conclude that it has the potential to modify the relationship between resource availability and competitive intensity.
- Although the habitat templet/C-S-R model appears reasonably robust, modification of the general framework may be required because one the basic, underlying assumptions was best supported when competition was defined phenomenologically.
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