Interactions are key drivers of the functioning and fate of plant communities. A traditional way to measure them is to use pairwise experiments, but such experiments do not scale up to species‐rich communities. For those, using association networks based on spatial patterns may provide a more realistic approach. While this method has been successful in abiotically‐stressed environments (alpine and arid ecosystems), it is unclear how well it generalizes to other types of environments.

中文翻译：

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草地上的放牧和消失的植物协会网络的复杂性

互动是植物群落功能和命运的关键驱动力。测量它们的传统方法是使用成对实验，但是这种实验无法扩展到物种丰富的社区。对于那些用户，使用基于空间模式的关联网络可能会提供更现实的方法。尽管该方法在非生物胁迫环境（高山和干旱生态系统）中是成功的，但尚不清楚它能否推广到其他类型的环境。