2020年12月4日出版的《科学》杂志发表了美国普林斯顿大学Stephen W. Pacala团队的最新成果，他们建立了植物根系的一种地下竞争模型。

研究人员基于博弈论开发了一种消费者资源模型，该模型可预测单个植物的根系密度空间分布，并在温室实验中测试了模型预测。实验中的植物通过调整根系的形成和分布来对附近的植物产生反应，这与研究人员构建的模型一致。因此，研究人员为植被在地下的碳分配提供了理论上的基础。

据了解，植物根系决定碳的吸收、存活率和农业产量，并占世界植被碳库的很大一部分。与地上生根竞争不同，地下竞争的研究因无法观察根而受到阻碍。

附：英文原文

Title: The exploitative segregation of plant roots

Author: Ciro Cabal, Ricardo Martínez-García, Aurora de Castro Aguilar, Fernando Valladares, Stephen W. Pacala

Issue&Volume: 2020/12/04

Abstract: Plant roots determine carbon uptake, survivorship, and agricultural yield and represent a large proportion of the world’s vegetation carbon pool. Study of belowground competition, unlike aboveground shoot competition, is hampered by our inability to observe roots. We developed a consumer-resource model based in game theory that predicts the root density spatial distribution of individual plants and tested the model predictions in a greenhouse experiment. Plants in the experiment reacted to neighbors as predicted by the model’s evolutionary stable equilibrium, by both overinvesting in nearby roots and reducing their root foraging range. We thereby provide a theoretical foundation for belowground allocation of carbon by vegetation that reconciles seemingly contradictory experimental results such as root segregation and the tragedy of the commons in plant roots.

DOI: 10.1126/science.aba9877

Source: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6521/1197