Previous theoretical work has highlighted the potential for natural enemies to mediate the coexistence of species with similar life histories via density‐dependent effects on survivorship. For plant pathogens to play this role, they must differ in their ability to infect or induce disease in different host plant species. In tropical forests characterized by high diversity, these effects must extend to phylogenetically closely related species pairs. Mortality at the seed and seedling stage strongly influences the abundance and distribution of tropical tree species, but the host preferences and spatial distributions of fungi are rarely determined. We examined how host species identity, relatedness and seed viability influence the composition of fungal communities associated with seeds of four co‐occurring pioneer trees ( Seeds were infected by fungi after burial. Although fungal communities differed in viable versus dead seeds, and across burial locations, community composition primarily varied as a function of plant species identity (30.7% of variation in community composition vs. 4.5% for viability and location together), even for congeneric Although the proportion of germinable seeds decreased gradually over time for all species, intraspecific variation in survival was high at the same location (e.g. ranging from 0% to 100% for
- Award ID(s):
- 1922521
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10218956
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Diversity
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 1424-2818
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 324
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/d12090324
