During the past 100 years, studies spanning thousands of taxa across almost all biomes have demonstrated that competition has powerful negative effects on the performance of individuals and can affect the composition of plant communities, the evolution of traits, and the functioning of whole ecosystems. In this review, we highlight new and important developments that have the potential to greatly improve our understanding of how plants compete and the consequences of competition from individuals to communities in the following major areas of research: (a) mechanisms of competition, (b) competitive effect and response, (c) direct and indirect effects of competition, (d) population-level effects of competition, (e) biogeographical differences in competition, and (f) conditionality of competition. Ecologists have discovered much about competition, but the mechanisms of competition and how competition affects the organization of communities in nature still require both theoretical and empirical exploration.

中文翻译：

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植物种间竞争的机制和后果

在过去的 100 年里，跨越几乎所有生物群落的数千个分类群的研究表明，竞争对个体的表现有强大的负面影响，并可能影响植物群落的组成、性状的进化和整个生态系统的功能。在这篇综述中，我们强调了新的和重要的发展，这些发展有可能大大提高我们对以下主要研究领域中植物如何竞争以及从个体到社区的竞争后果的理解：(a) 竞争机制，(b)竞争效应和反应，(c) 竞争的直接和间接影响，(d) 竞争对人口水平的影响，(e) 竞争中的生物地理差异，以及 (f) 竞争的条件。生态学家发现了很多关于竞争的东西，