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Competitive Interactions in California Annual Grasslands

  • Chapter
Grassland structure and function

Part of the book series: Tasks for vegetation science ((TAVS,volume 20))

Abstract

One of the most striking features of California annual grasslands is their high species diversity. The maintenance of species diversity, in spite of the potential force of competitive exclusion acting to simplify community structure, has been a favorite topic for ecological speculation (Darwin 1859; Tansley and Adamson 1925; Hutchinson 1959; Miller 1969). Years before the development of modern niche theory, the importance of experimentally linking patterns of diversity within a plant community to underlying competitive interactions was well recognized (Tansley 1914; Clements et al. 1929; Salisbury 1929; Watt 1947). Temporal and spatial variation in resources (Grubb 1977; Wiens 1977; Tilman 1982), grazing (Ellison 1960; Harper 1969), disturbance (Connell 1978; Pickett 1980), and dispersal dynamics (Caswell 1978) all have been proposed as regulators of species diversity because of their effect on competitive coexistence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agronomy and Range Science, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Kevin J. Rice

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  1. Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., USA

    Harold A. Mooney

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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht

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Rice, K.J. (1989). Competitive Interactions in California Annual Grasslands. In: Huenneke, L.F., Mooney, H.A. (eds) Grassland structure and function. Tasks for vegetation science, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3113-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3113-8_6

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