Knowledge about Plant Coexistence during Vegetation Succession for Forest Management on the Loess Plateau, China

Coexistence between species within plant communities is a key issue in the practice of revegetation, forest management, and biodiversity conservation. Vegetation restoration is critical to control soil erosion and improve the ecological environment on the Loess Plateau. Here, we investigate the interspecific relationships of dominant plants during natural vegetation succession on the Loess Plateau. The results suggest that, under the ecological process of environmental filtering, species within communities can reduce interspecific competition and promote species coexistence via spatial heterogeneity and temporal asynchronous differences. The ecological niche overlap index (O_ik) significantly and positively correlated with the strength of interspecific associations. Most species pairs had weak competition and more stable interspecific relationships. The results of the χ² test showed that 317 species pairs were positively associated and 118 were negatively associated. The community is in a positive succession process, and the interaction relationship between species tends to be neutral. We should enhance the protection of positively associated species and pay attention to negatively associated species during forest management. Results revealed that Boott and Lespedeza bicolor Turcz coexisted easily with other species for mutual benefit, which could help build artificial forestland of native species to improve the ecological function.