Zaal Kikvidze

TL;DR: It is shown that the biomass, growth and reproduction of alpine plant species are higher when other plants are nearby, and that competition generally, but not exclusively, dominates interactions at lower elevations where conditions are less physically stressful.

TL;DR: There is substantial scope for exploring indirect facilitative effects in plant communities, including their impacts on diversity and evolution, and future studies should connect the degree of non-transitivity in plant competitive networks to community diversity and facilitative promotion of species coexistence.

TL;DR: In this paper, a new understanding of the role of facilitative interactions in plant communities has been proposed to explain the observed discrepancies between natural patterns of species richness and community biomass and the results of experimental studies of the impact of biodiversity on the productivity of herbaceous communities.

TL;DR: The integrated community (IC) model as discussed by the authors proposes that communities can range from highly natural plant communities individualistic to highly interdependent depending on synergism among: (i) stochastic processes, (ii) the abiotic tolerances of species, positive and negative interactions among plants, and indirect interactions within and between trophic levels.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that competition importance and intensity need not be correlated and how explicit application of the intensity and importance of competition may reconcile apparently incompatible paradigms is shown.