Competition and Coexistence in Terrestrial Plants

Abstract

There are about 250,000 species of vascular plants extant globally. With about 50 different types of biomes in each of the worlds five major biogeographic realms, there are on average 1,000 plant species per biome. One of the major unknowns of plant community ecology has been how so many species of plants coexist without a few species competitively excluding all others. Classical ecological theory suggested that there would be only as many species as there were limiting factors. This theoretical challenge has been successfully overcome, so that there are now a diversity of explanations for multispecies coexistence. However, we now face the more daunting task of discerning which of the many alternative mechanisms of coexistence operates in a community, recognizing that it is possible, and even likely, that multiple mechanisms occur simultaneously.