Assessing determinants of community biomass composition in two-species plant competition studies

A method is proposed for assessing the relative importance of species identity, neighbour species influence and environment as determinants of change in community biomass composition in two-species short-term competition experiments. The method is based on modelling the differences in relative growth rates (RGR) of species (hence called the RGRD method). Using a multiple regression approach it quantifies the effects of initial species' abundance, species identity and environment on RGRD and hence on change in community biomass composition. The RGRD approach is relatively simple to use and deals readily with statistical difficulties associated with correlated responses between species from the same stand. It can be easily adapted to analyse sequential harvest data. An example based on data from two-species mixtures of the annual species Stellaria media and Poa annua is used to illustrate the method. The main determinant of change in community biomass composition was species identity, reflected in the difference in growth rates between the species. Change in community composition was not, in general, significantly affected by the influence of neighbours or fertiliser level. The unimportance of the influence of neighbours in affecting the composition of these communities contrasts with the strong role of intra- and interspecific competition in determining the size of individuals of both species (Connolly et al. in Oecologia 82:513-526, 1990).