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Overdispersed Spatial Patterning Of Dominant Bunchgrasses In Southeastern Pine Savannas, Katherines A. Hovanes, Kyle E. Harms, Paul R. Gagnon, Jonathan A. Myers, Bret D. Elderd
Overdispersed Spatial Patterning Of Dominant Bunchgrasses In Southeastern Pine Savannas, Katherines A. Hovanes, Kyle E. Harms, Paul R. Gagnon, Jonathan A. Myers, Bret D. Elderd
Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations
Spatial patterning is a key natural history attribute of sessile organisms that frequently emerges from and dictates potential for interactions among organisms. We tested whether bunchgrasses, the dominant plant functional group in longleaf pine savanna groundcover communities, are nonrandomly patterned by characterizing the spatial dispersion of three bunchgrass species across six sites in Louisiana and Florida. We mapped bunchgrass tussocks of >5.0 cm basal diameter in three [Formula: see text] plots at each site. We modeled tussocks as two-dimensional objects to analyze their spatial relationships while preserving sizes and shapes of individual tussocks. Tussocks were overdispersed (more regularly spaced than …