Light competition, the main force in shaping plant height, is ubiquitous in the plant kingdom. Plant height was commonly treated as a competitive strategy and investigated under the game-theoretic framework. However, how plant heights are shaped by light environment under natural selection has not yet been fully understood. Aiming at revealing the potential mechanism causing the height diversification and complex evolutionary dynamics, we here propose an eco-evolutionary model of the plant competing for light, in which the benefit and cost due to light competition as well as density-dependent selection are considered. We provide the criteria for producing different evolutionary consequences. The results show that the moderate levels of competitive costs boost the diversity of plant height, and that the eco-evolutionary feedback results in complex nature of the height evolution. In the power-type cost, the evolutionary consequence of plant height highly depends on the shape of benefit and cost functions, and the height evolution under convex benefit or concave cost displays a trend of evident diversification, which is most pronounced when the two factors are added together, whereas a homogenization tendency of the height evolution occurs in the opposite cases. Meantime, the classification of evolutionary states under different benefit-cost combinations exhibits distinct structure patterns. Generally, more complex evolutionary dynamics are caused if we consider the Hill-type cost: the multiple evolutionary equilibria and phase transitions between these evolutionary equilibria could occur. These results help us in part understand why plant heights in the plant kingdom are highly diverse.

光竞争是塑造植物高度的主要力量，在植物界无处不在。植物高度通常被视为一种竞争策略，并在博弈论框架下进行研究。然而，在自然选择下，光环境如何塑造植物高度尚未完全了解。为了揭示导致高度多样化和复杂进化动力学的潜在机制，我们在这里提出了植物竞争光的生态进化模型，其中考虑了光竞争以及密度依赖性选择的收益和成本。我们提供了产生不同进化结果的标准。结果表明，适度的竞争成本水平提高了植物高度的多样性，并且生态进化反馈导致高度进化的复杂性。在动力型成本中，株高的演化后果高度依赖于收益和成本函数的形状，凸收益或凹成本下的高度演化呈现明显的多样化趋势，当这两个因素为加在一起，而高度演化的同质化趋势发生在相反的情况下。同时，不同收益成本组合下的进化状态分类表现出不同的结构模式。通常，如果我们考虑希尔型成本，则会导致更复杂的进化动力学：可能会发生多重进化平衡和这些进化平衡之间的相变。