• Researchers at the Doñana Biological Station have analyzed which species have an essential role in the seed dispersal of Phoenicean juniper in the Doñana National Park.

According to the competitive exclusion principle, species with low competitive abilities should be excluded by more efficient competitors; yet, they generally remain as rare species. The positive and negative spatial association networks of 326 disparate assemblages was described showing a general organization pattern that simultaneously supports the primacy of competition and the persistence of rare species.

Established plants can affect the recruitment of young plants, filtering out some and allowing the recruitment of others, with profound effects on plant community dynamics. Recruitment networks (RNs) depict which species recruit under which others. Here, whether species abundance and phylogenetic distance explain the structure of RNs across communities is investigated.

Interactions between established (canopy) and recruiting individuals (recruits) are pervasive in plant communities. Studies on recruitment in forests have mainly focused on negative density-dependent conspecific interactions, while the outcomes of heterospecific canopy–recruit interactions have received much less attention and are generally assumed to be driven by stochastic processes. Herein, the relative influence of stochastic (abundance) and deterministic (species identity and...

During the past decades, managed honeybee stocks have increased globally. Managed honeybees are particularly used within mass-flowering crops and often spill over to adjacent natural habitats after crop blooming. This study uniquely shows the simultaneous impact that honeybee spillover has on wild plant and animal communities in flower-rich woodlands via changes in plant–pollinator network structure that translate into a direct negative effect on the reproductive success of a dominant...