Abstract
In the Chihuahuan Desert of the southwestern United States we monitored responses of both winter and summer annual plant communities to natural environmental variation and to experimental removal of seed-eating rodents and ants for 13 years. Analyses of data on population densities of the species by principal component analysis (PCA) followed by repeated measures analysis of variance (rmANOVA) on PCA scores showed that: (1) composition of both winter and summer annual communities varied substantially from year to year, presumably in response to interannual climatic variation, and (2) community composition of winter annuals was also significantly affected by the experimental manipulations of seed-eating animals, but the composition of the summer annual community showed no significant response to these experimental treatments. Canonical discriminant analysis (CDA) was then applied to the data for winter annuals to more clearly identify the responses to the different classes of experimental manipulations. This analysis showed that removing rodents or ants or both taxa caused distinctive changes in species composition. There was a tendency for large-seeded species to increase on rodent removal plots and to decrease on ant removal plots, and for small-seeded species to change in the opposite direction. In the winter annual community there was a significant time x treatment interaction: certain combinations of species that responded differently to removal of granivores also showed opposite fluctuations in response to long-term climatic variation. The large year-to-year variation in the summer annual community was closely and positively correlated across all experimental treatments. The use of multivariate analysis in conjunction with long-term monitoring and experimental manipulation shows how biotic interactions interact with variation in abiotic conditions to affect community dynamics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Austin MP (1977) Use of ordination and other multivariate descriptive methods to study succession. Vegetatio 35: 165–175
Beatley JC (1967) Survival of winter annuals in the northern Mojave Desert. Ecology 48: 745–750
Beatley JC (1969) Dependence of desert rodents on winter annuals and precipitation. Ecology 50: 721–724
Bender EA, Case TJ, Gilpin ME (1984) Perturbation experiments in community ecology: theory and practice. Ecology 65: 1–13
Bray JR, Curtis JT (1957) An ordination of the upland forest communities of southern Wisconsin. Ecol Monogr 27: 325–349
Brown JH, Heske EJ (1990) Control of a desert-grassland transition by a keystone rodent guild. Science 250: 1705–1707
Brown JH, Munger JC (1985) Experimental manipulation of a desert rodent community: food addition and species removal. Ecology 66: 1545–1563
Brown JH, Zeng ZY (1989) Comparative population ecology of eleven species of rodents in the Chihuahuan Desert. Ecology 70: 1507–1525
Brown JH, Reichman OJ, Davidson DW (1979) Granivory in desert ecosystems. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 10: 201–227
Brown JH, Davidson DW, Munger JC, Inouye RS (1986) Experimental community ecology: the desert granivore system. In: Diamond J, Case TJ (eds) Community ecology. Harper and Row, New York, pp 41–61
Cohen D (1968) A general model of optimal reproduction in a randomly varying environment. J Ecol 56: 219–228
Connell JH (1961) The effects of competition, predation by Thais lapillus, and other factors on natural populations of the barnacle Balanus balanoides. Ecol Monogr 31: 61–104
Davidson DW, Samson DA, Inouye RS (1985) Granivory in the Chihuahuan Desert: interactions within and between trophic levels. Ecology 66: 486–502
Fox GA (1989) Consequences of flowering-time variation in a desert annual: adaptation and history. Ecology 70: 1294–1306
Freas KE, Kemp PR (1983) Some relationships between environmental reliability and seed dormancy in desert annual plants. J Ecol 71: 211–217
Guo Q (1994). Dynamic desert plant community ecology: changes in space and time. PhD dissertation, University of New Mexico, USA
Gutierrez JR, Whitford WG (1987) Chihuahuan Desert annuals: importance of water and nitrogen. Ecology 68: 2032–2045
Harper JL (1977) Population biology of plants. Academic Press, San Francisco, California
Hengeveld R (1990) Dynamic biogeography. Cambridge University Press, New York
Heske EJ, Brown JH, Guo Q (1993) The effects of kangaroo rat exclusion on vegetation structure and plant species diversity in the Chihuahuan Desert. Oecologia 95: 520–524
Hurlbert SH (1984) Pseudoreplication and the design of ecological field experiments. Ecol Monogr 54: 187–211
Inouye RS (1981) Interactions among unrelated species: granivorous rodents, a parasitic fungus, and a shared prey species. Oecologia 49: 425–427
Inouye RS, Byers GS, Brown JH (1980) Effects of predation and competition on survivorship, fecundity, and community structure of desert annuals. Ecology 61: 1344–1351
Jongman RHG, Braak CJF ter, Tongeren OFR van (1987) Data analysis in community and landscape ecology. Pudoc, Wageningen
Kemp PR (1983) Phenological patterns of Chihuahuan Desert plants in relation to the timing of water availability. J Ecol 71: 427–436
Lawley DN (1959) Tests of significance in canonical analysis. Biometrica 46: 59–66
Lubchenco J, Menge BA (1978) Community development and persistence in a rocky intertidal zone. Ecol Monogr 48: 67–94
Manly BFJ (1986) Multivariate statistical methods, a primer. Chapman and Hall, London
Martin PS (1963) The last 10,000 years. University of Arizona Press, Tucson
Menge BA, Berlow EL, Blanchette CA (1994) The keystone species concept: variation in interaction strength in a rocky intertidal habitat. Ecol Monogr 64: 249–286
Mulroy TW, Rundel PW (1977) Annual plants: adaptation to desert environments. Bioscience 27: 109–114
Patten DT (1978) Productivity and production efficiency of an upper Sonoran Desert ephemeral community. Am J Bot 65: 891–895
Roughgarden J, Gaines SD, Pacala SW (1987) Supply side ecology: the role of physical transport processes. In: Gee JHR, Giller PH (eds) Organization of communities: past and present. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 491–518
Roughgarden J, Gaines SD, Possingham H (1988) Recruitment dynamics in complex life cycles. Science 241: 1460–1466
Samson DA, Philippi TE, Davidson DW (1992) Granivory and competition as determinants of annual plant diversity in the Chihuahuan Desert. Oikos 65: 61–80
SAS (1988) SAS/STAT User's Guide, release 6.03 edn. SAS Institute, Cary
Seller WD, Hill RH (1974). Arizona climate 1931–1972, 2nd edition. University of Arizona, Tucson
Venable DL, Brown JS (1988) The selective interactions of dispersal, dormancy, and seed size as adaptation for reducing risk in variable environments. Am Nat 131: 360–384
Went FW (1948) Ecology of desert plants. I. Observations on germination in the Joshua Tree National Monument, California. Ecology 29: 242–253
Went FW (1949) Ecology of desert plants. II. The effects of rain and temperature on germination and growth. Ecology 30: 1–13
Went FW (1979) Germination and seedling behavior of desert plants. In: Goodall DW, Perry RA (eds) Arid-land ecosystem: structure, functioning and management, vol 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 477–489
Went FW, Westergaard A (1949) Ecology of desert plants. III. Development of plants in the Death Valley National Monument, California. Ecology 30: 26–38
Wootton JT (1993) Indirect effects and habitat use in an intertidal community: interaction chains and interaction modifications. Am Nat 141: 71–89
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Guo, Q., Brown, J.H. Temporal fluctuations and experimental effects in desert plant communities. Oecologia 107, 568–577 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00333950
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00333950