| ABSTRACT Competition for soil water is one of the major processes that drive the assembly of plant communities, particularly in regions subjected to long dry seasons. The relationship between plant density and soil water competition has strong, but poorly understood, practical implications for population dynamics, restoration and conservation. We planted seedlings of the pioneer legume tree Senegalia polyphylla in containers and assessed the effects of plant density on their resistance to water stress. We completely eliminated the above-ground parts (stem and shoots) of randomly selected plants at 60-days post-planting in order to create three different densities of seedlings. We saturated the soil of the remaining seedlings and then deprived them of... |
