Plants that grow in high density communities activate shade avoidance responses to consolidate light capture by individuals. Although this is an evolutionary successful strategy, it may not enhance performance of the community as a whole. Resources are invested in shade responses at the expense of other organs and light penetration through the canopy is increased, allowing invading competitors to grow better. Here we investigate if suppression of shade avoidance responses would enhance group performance of a monoculture community that is invaded by a competitor. Using different Arabidopsis genotypes, we show that suppression of shade‐induced upward leaf movement in the pif7 mutant increases the pif7 communal performance against invaders as compared to a wild‐type canopy. The invaders were more severely suppressed and the community grew larger as compared to wild type. Using computational modelling, we show that leaf angle variations indeed strongly affect light penetration and growth of competitors that invade the canopy. Our data thus show that modifying specific shade avoidance aspects can improve plant community performance. These insights may help to suppress weeds in crop stands.

中文翻译：

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减少避荫可以提高拟南芥树冠对抗竞争对手的性能

生长在高密度群落中的植物会激活避荫反应以巩固个体对光的捕获。尽管这是一种渐进式成功的策略，但它可能不会提高整个社区的绩效。资源以牺牲其他器官为代价投入到遮荫反应中，并且通过树冠的光线穿透增加，从而使入侵的竞争对手能够更好地生长。在这里，我们调查抑制避荫反应是否会提高被竞争对手入侵的单一栽培社区的群体表现。使用不同的拟南芥基因型，我们表明抑制pif7突变体中遮荫诱导的向上叶片运动增加了pif7与野生型树冠相比，对入侵者的公共表现。与野生型相比，入侵者受到更严厉的压制，群落变得更大。使用计算建模，我们表明叶角变化确实强烈影响侵入树冠的竞争者的光穿透和生长。因此，我们的数据表明，修改特定的避荫方面可以提高植物群落的表现。这些见解可能有助于抑制作物林中的杂草。