Abstract Understanding the mechanisms driving community dynamics helps us to make reliable predictions about communities’ response to environmental change. Studying desert plant communities is particularly challenging because of strong intra- and interannual fluctuations in precipitation. Models rise to this challenge by providing an arena for systematic evaluation of the parameter space in virtual experiments. We applied a trait- and individual-based model to explore how community dynamics arise from the plant traits and interactions of plants with other plants and with their environment. The model is based on data from annual plant communities in the Negev Desert dominated by the True Rose of Jericho (Anastatica hierochuntica). We showed that functional traits that are involved in plant-plant interactions are equally important for community dynamics as traits promoting tolerance to abiotic stress. The sensitivity analysis of the model highlights relative growth rate, maximum biomass, the amount of time in dormancy and germination probability as the most important traits for community dynamics. The model reflects the particular importance of environmental factors such as precipitation and soil water availability based on topography for community dynamics. Our model benefits from the ability of individual-based models to capture plant-plant interactions and derive community properties from individual characteristics and from the feature of trait-based approaches to link traits to organismal functions. Our study demonstrates the advantages of the combined use of trait- and individual-based models for investigating community drivers in changing extreme environments.

中文翻译：

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结合基于特征和个体的建模以了解沙漠植物群落动态

摘要 了解驱动社区动态的机制有助于我们对社区对环境变化的反应做出可靠的预测。由于降水的强烈年内和年际波动，研究沙漠植物群落尤其具有挑战性。模型通过为虚拟实验中的参数空间的系统评估提供一个舞台来应对这一挑战。我们应用基于性状和个体的模型来探索群落动态如何从植物性状以及植物与其他植物及其环境的相互作用中产生。该模型基于内盖夫沙漠中以杰里科真玫瑰 (Anastatica hierochuntica) 为主的一年生植物群落的数据。我们表明，涉及植物 - 植物相互作用的功能性状对于群落动态与促进对非生物胁迫的耐受性的性状同样重要。该模型的敏感性分析强调了相对增长率、最大生物量、休眠时间和发芽概率是群落动态最重要的特征。该模型反映了环境因素的特殊重要性，例如基于地形的降水和土壤水分可用性对群落动态的重要性。我们的模型得益于基于个体的模型能够捕捉植物与植物的相互作用，并从个体特征和基于特征的方法将特征与有机体功能联系起来的特征中推导出群落属性。