Figshare - Plant Pathogens (Data and metadata)

Systematic Review In looking for the most recent information on plant pathogen impacts on succession, a systematic review was done using JSTOR online in November 2015. The year of the publications varied from 1950 to 2015. The key words used to search for the journal articles were ‘pathogens’, ‘trade-offs’, ‘succession’, ‘root defence’, ‘negative feedback’, ‘resistance’, ‘community’, ‘species coexistence’, ‘competition’, and ‘disturbance’. Topics that were not related to plant pathogen effects on succession were excluded from the review such as ‘seed predation’ and ‘herbivory’. There were 102 studies that came up in the search results that showed relevance to the topic. Reading the abstracts and organizing the articles based on three categories then filtered out subsets of these 102 studies: pathogen effects, succession, and defence/resistance. Any other supplementary information on interspecific competition and resource partitioning was found using Google Scholar and reviewed to meet the criteria. A final count of 35 studies was selected for this systematic review based upon data that was valid to the topic. Studies that did not discuss the effects of pathogens on plant communities or explain theory related to plant community dynamics were excluded from the review. Articles that did not perform tests on resistance or trade-offs during plant-pathogen interactions were also excluded. Most of the studies were published between the years of 1990 to the late 2000s. And majority of the experiments were done in North America or Australia. Publication companies that produced the most number of articles in the review were Journal of Ecology and Ecology Letters. Data Analysis The studies were organized on a regional level by counting what country the study took place in, then sorting each study out based on the continent that each country belongs to. The studies were also reviewed for the type of experimental method used and separated based on the category of pathogen that was observed. Studies that looked at different stages of succession were also organized based on how old the ecosystem being tested was. A table was created based on a list of defensive traits expressed by a plants root system and the source was listed beside it. All defensive traits that had anything to do with herbivory were not included in the review.