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Journal ArticleDOI

A Null Model for Competitive Hierarchies in Competition Matrices

Bill Shipley
- 01 Sep 1993 - 
- Vol. 74, Iss: 6, pp 1693-1699
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TLDR
A more demanding definition of competitive transitivity ("complete transitivity") is introduced that defines a strict hierarchy of competitive relationships and that has more desirable properties for inferring competitive exclusion.
Abstract
To evaluate the tendency of plant species to be arranged in hierarchies of competitive ability, Keddy and Shipley (1989) introduced a definition of competitive transitivity in multispecies competition matrices and developed an inferential statistic to test for such a pattern. Here, I introduce a more demanding definition of competitive transitivity ("complete transitivity") that defines a strict hierarchy of competitive relationships and that has more desirable properties for inferring competitive exclusion. A null model, and its accompanying Monte Carlo test, is developed that can be used in analyzing empirical competition matrices. Ten published competition matrices are analyzed; nine show clear evidence of complete transitivity. See full-text article at JSTOR

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Quantifying biodiversity: procedures and pitfalls in the measurement and comparison of species richness

TL;DR: A series of common pitfalls in quantifying and comparing taxon richness are surveyed, including category‐subcategory ratios (species-to-genus and species-toindividual ratios) and rarefaction methods, which allow for meaningful standardization and comparison of datasets.
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Beyond pairwise mechanisms of species coexistence in complex communities

TL;DR: Progress requires borrowing insight from the study of multitrophic interaction networks, and coupling empirical data to models of competition, to understand the mechanisms of coexistence that emerge only in diverse competitive networks.
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Designs for greenhouse studies of interactions between plants

TL;DR: Designs for greenhouse studies of interactions between plants are reviewed and recommendations for their use are provided, showing the replacement series design to be the most popular, especially in studying crop–weed interactions.
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Does phylogenetic relatedness influence the strength of competition among vascular plants

TL;DR: It is suggested that Darwin's assertion that competition will be strongest among closely related species is not supported by empirical data, at least for the 142 vascular plant species in this study.