Pin Jia Chan

1 Introduction Plant disease can shape plant communities indirectly through influencing host population dynamics (Burdon 1991; Burdon et al. 2006; Gilbert 2002). Reduced growth, survival and reproduction rates of the host affect the intensities of competition and facilitation between host and surrounding plants. This ultimately leads to downstream effects on the local species composition (Alexander and Holt 1998; Mordecai 2011).

Jie Huang College of Forestry, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Conservation, Guangxi University, Daxuedonglu 100, Nanning, 530004 Guangxi, China Botany, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin, D2 Ireland These authors contributed equally to this work and share co-first authorship. Search for more papers by this author