Alternative states in plant communities driven by a life-history tradeoff and demographic stochasticity

TL;DR

This study explores how a specific plant life-history tradeoff, combined with demographic stochasticity, can lead to alternative stable community states or prolonged transient dynamics, affecting community assembly outcomes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that demographic stochasticity influences alternative stable states in plant communities beyond deterministic tradeoff effects, highlighting the importance of stochastic processes.

Findings

Demographic stochasticity drives alternative stable equilibria.

Tradeoff alone is necessary but not sufficient for alternative states.

Transient dynamics can mimic stable equilibria in empirical observations.

Abstract

Life-history tradeoffs among species are major drivers of community assembly. Most studies investigate how tradeoffs promote deterministic coexistence of species. It remains unclear how tradeoffs may instead promote historically contingent exclusion of species, where species dominance is affected by initial abundances, causing alternative community states. Focusing on the establishment-longevity tradeoff, we study the transient dynamics and equilibrium outcomes of competitive interactions in a simulation model of plant community assembly. We show that, in this model, the establishment-longevity tradeoff is a necessary but not sufficient condition for alternative stable equilibria that require also low fecundity for both species. An analytical approximation of our simulation model demonstrates that alternative stable equilibria are driven by demographic stochasticity in the number of seeds arriving at each establishment site. This site-scale stochasticity is only affected by fecundity and therefore occurs even in infinitely large communities. In many cases where the establishment-longevity tradeoff does not cause alternative stable equilibria, it still decreases the rate of convergence toward the single equilibrium, resulting in decades of transient dynamics that can appear indistinguishable from alternative stable equilibria in empirical studies.