Does niche differentiation allow the sympatric congeners species coexistence in a megadiverse forest?

• Grant number: 17/23084-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2018
• End date: June 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Ecosystems Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Flavio Antonio Maës dos Santos
• Grantee: Kelly Fernandes de Oliveira Ribeiro
• Supervisor: Thorsten Wiegand
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Helmholtz Association, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 16/21307-5 - Does niche differentiation allow the sympatric congeners species coexistence in a megadiverse forest?, BP.DR

Abstract

Niche theory is one of the main mechanisms of species coexistence, and a popular approaches to test niche theory is evaluation of the spatial structure of plant populations. Thus, the aim of the present study is to evaluate evidence for niche differences as a mechanism of coexistence through investigation of spatial patterns of three sympatric congenic species in a Restinga Forest in Ubatuba-SP. In a plot of one hectare, all individuals belonging to the three species were marked, mapped, classified into ontogenetic stages and their diameter soil height (DSH) was determined. In Germany, we will analyze the spatial association between each ontogenetic stage of the three species and evaluate competitive effects based on the quantitative information of DSH associated with each individual. If niche differentiation is an important mechanism of coexistence we expect that: (1) species will increase the degree of aggregation along ontogenetic stages due to environmental filtration; (2) there will be increasing spatial repulsion among species along the ontogeny, with complete spatial segregation of adults of different species due to environmental filtering; (3) There will be no influence of the proximity of congeneric individuals on the size of focal individuals due to the absence of competition.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

RIBEIRO, KELLY F. O.; MARTINS, VALERIA F.; WIEGAND, THORSTEN; SANTOS, FLAVIO A. M.. Habitat filtering drives the local distribution of congeneric species in a Brazilian white-sand flooded tropical forest. ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, v. 11, n. 4, JAN 2021. (16/21307-5, 17/23084-6)