Abstract
AbstractPairwise interactions between species can be modified by other community members, leading to emergent dynamics that are contingent on the composition of a community. Despite the prevalence of such higher-order interactions, little is known about how they are linked to the timing and order of species’ arrival. Yet, these temporal patterns typically affect their pairwise interactions (i.e., priority effects) and thus could also modify higher-order interactions in multispecies communities. Here, we first develop a general framework of time-dependent interaction modifications by building on pairwise priority effects. By applying this framework to data generated by a mechanistic plant-soil feedback model, we show that how pairwise interactions are modified by a third plant depends on the relative sequence and spacing of plants’ germination phenology. This time-dependence of interaction modifications emerges from concurrent changes in plant and microbe populations and they become stronger with a higher overlap between plants’ associated microbiomes. We discuss how processes in the plant-soil feedback model represent a wide range of mechanisms applicable in other systems from which similar time-dependent interaction modifications can emerge. Our results highlight the need to integrate temporal shifts of species interactions to predict the emergent dynamics of natural communities.
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory