Although plant–plant interactions (i.e. competition and facilitation) have long been recognised as key drivers of plant community composition and dynamics, their global patterns and relationships with climate have remained unclear. Here, we assembled a global database of 10,502 pairs of empirical data from the literature to address the patterns of and climatic effects on the net outcome of plant interactions in natural communities. We found that plant interactions varied among plant performance indicators, interaction types and biomes, yet competition occurred more frequently than facilitation in plant communities worldwide. Unexpectedly, plant interactions showed weak latitudinal pattern and were weakly related to climate. Our study provides a global comprehensive overview of plant interactions, highlighting competition as a fundamental mechanism structuring plant communities worldwide. We suggest that further investigations should focus more on local factors (e.g. microclimate, soil and disturbance) than on macroclimate to identify key environmental determinants of interactions in plant communities.

中文翻译：

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净植物相互作用在全球范围内变化很大，对气候的依赖性很小

尽管植物-植物相互作用（即竞争和促进）长期以来被认为是植物群落组成和动态的关键驱动因素，但它们的全球模式和与气候的关系仍不清楚。在这里，我们从文献中收集了 10,502 对经验数据的全球数据库，以解决自然群落中植物相互作用的净结果的模式和气候影响。我们发现植物的相互作用在植物性能指标、相互作用类型和生物群落之间存在差异，但在世界范围内的植物群落中，竞争比促进更频繁地发生。出乎意料的是，植物相互作用显示出较弱的纬度模式，并且与气候的相关性较弱。我们的研究提供了植物相互作用的全球综合概述，强调竞争是构建全球植物群落的基本机制。我们建议进一步的调查应更多地关注当地因素（例如小气候、土壤和干扰），而不是大气候，以确定植物群落相互作用的关键环境决定因素。