Ecological network studies are providing important advances about the organization, stability and dynamics of ecological systems. However, the ecological networks approach is being integrated very slowly in plant community ecology, even though the first studies on plant facilitation networks were published more than a decade ago. The study of interaction networks between established plants and plants recruiting beneath them, which are called Recruitment Networks (RNs), can provide new...

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.