Ambient
We can contrast these two broad types of shifts in community structure
under global change manipulations to the patterns observed under ambient
conditions (CTL), which showed little directional change over time. The
cover of dominant and subdominant species did not change, while the
abundance of moderate species decreased and rare species slightly
increased (marginally significant) (Fig 1, Table 1). Given that
different global change treatments resulted in distinct shifts in
community structure, we then ask whether density-independent responses
to the environment or density-dependent species interactions best
explain these shifts.