Plant distribution patterns are influenced by many different factors. We examined mechanisms behind local distribution patterns of boreo‐nemoral fleshy‐fruited woody plants with seed dispersal mainly mediated by birds. It has been suggested that guilds of these plants develop ‘orchards', i.e. locally aggregated occurrences composed of several species. We analysed spatially explicit occurrence data of different life stages of a local guild of fleshy‐fruited woody plants in south‐eastern Sweden, and conducted a seedling recruitment experiment for a subset of ten species. Spatial point pattern analyses showed that the guild of fleshy‐fruited species was aggregated at small (< 10 m) spatial scales. Saplings were more common under canopies of heterospecific reproductive individuals than expected by chance. These results show that the local guild of fleshy‐fruited species is distributed as orchards, i.e. clusters consisting of individuals of different species and life stages. We found no evidence of negative distance dependence between saplings and reproductive conspecific individuals. Results from the recruitment experiment suggest that recruitment is seed limited and generally low among the studied species. At the site‐scale (circular areas with 50 m radius), there was no difference in seedling recruitment between sites with and without reproductive conspecific individuals for most species included in the recruitment experiment. This further suggests that the aggregated patterns found are not simply a result of spatial concordance in suitable habitats across life stages. Instead, we suggest that the sheer number of seeds from species in the guild deposited under the crowns of fruit bearing individuals is the main mechanism behind the build‐up of orchards. Although further studies are needed to fully disentangle the processes underlying the observed patterns of local diversity, we argue that describing patterns and contrasting them to the predictions of ecologically relevant hypotheses is a useful first step.

中文翻译：

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果肉木本植物的本地分布模式–检验果园假说

植物分布方式受许多不同因素的影响。我们研究了种子主要由鸟类介导的北nemoral肉质果木本植物的本地分布模式背后的机制。已经提出，这些植物的行会会形成“果园”，即由几种物种组成的局部聚集事件。我们分析了瑞典东南部肉质木本植物当地行会不同生命阶段的空间显性发生数据，并针对十个物种的子集进行了幼苗招募试验。空间点模式分析表明，果肉种类的行会在较小（<10 m）的空间尺度上聚集。在异种繁殖个体的树冠下，幼树比偶然预期的更为普遍。这些结果表明，当地的果肉物种行会以果园的形式分布，即由不同物种和不同生命阶段的个体组成的集群。我们没有发现任何证据表明树苗和繁殖同种个体之间存在负距离依赖性。招募实验的结果表明，招募是受种子限制的，并且在所研究物种中通常很低。在场地规模上（半径为50 m的圆形区域），对于招募实验中包括的大多数物种，在有和没有生殖同种个体的地点之间，幼苗的招募没有差异。这进一步表明，发现的聚集模式不仅是整个生命阶段适当栖息地中空间一致性的结果。反而，我们认为，在果树个体的树冠下存放的行会物种的种子数量之多，是果园建成的主要机制。尽管需要进一步研究以完全弄清所观察到的局部多样性模式背后的过程，但我们认为描述模式并将其与生态相关假设的预测进行对比是一个有用的第一步。