, 2003 and Buytaert et al., 2011). De facto, there is a strong imbalance between the number of species found in the tropics and the number of ecological studies undertaken in tropical

environments as compared with temperate ecosystems ( Stocks et al., 2008). Tropical alpine plant communities display a high species richness when related to species distribution area, equivalent ( Rundel et al., 1994 and Körner, 2003) or perhaps even superior ( Molau, 2004) than that found in other alpine communities. Furthermore, tropical http://www.selleckchem.com/screening/ion-channel-ligand-library.html alpine species present highly diverse architectures with growth forms that are absent or much less frequent in other alpine environments (e.g. giant rosettes, giant cushions, and tussock grasses; Smith, 1994 and Ramsay and Oxley, 1997), and, often, a remarkable proportion of endemic species (e.g. 29% in the Ecuadorian highlands; Kessler, 2002). Despite these singular features, the study of plant–plant interactions has been largely neglected by

ecologists in TAE. According to the stress-gradient hypothesis (hereafter SGH) which states that positive plant–plant interactions increase in frequency along increasing gradients of stress (Bertness and Callaway, 1994, Brooker and Callaghan, 1998, Brooker et al., 2008 and Maestre et al., 2009), negative (competitive) interactions are expected to play a relatively minor role in the organization of plant communities in alpine environments, given the high levels of stress and disturbance that characterize http://www.selleckchem.com/products/azd6738.html these environments (Grime, 2001 and Körner, 2003). In contrast, positive (facilitative) interactions among plants are particularly frequent in alpine environments (Callaway et al., 2002, Kikvidze et al., 2005 and le Roux and McGeoch, 2010) where they are mediated by the ameliorating effects of nurse plants (sensu Turner et al., 1966) on the microenvironment. Positive plant–plant interactions therefore play a central role in the assemblage, evolution, and productivity

of plant communities of these ecosystems ( Badano and Marquet, 2009, Cavieres and Badano, 2009 and Michalet et al., 2011), even though their role has also been reported to be highly variable ( Dullinger et al., 2007) or even insignificant ( Mitchell et al., 2009) Sorafenib in some regions. To date, the SGH has been corroborated in a variety of alpine regions worldwide ( Choler et al., 2001, Callaway et al., 2002, Kikvidze et al., 2005, Dullinger et al., 2007, Cavieres and Badano, 2009 and le Roux and McGeoch, 2010). There are at least two important and topical reasons for being concerned with the study of plant–plant interactions in TAE. First, none of the studies cited above investigated the outcome of plant–plant interactions in TAE, even though testing the SGH in TAE is a prerequisite for generalizing its validity in alpine ecosystems.