A plant growth model to test for changes in plant–plant interaction over a growing season: the case of kin competition

Kin recognition and kin selection have long been known to occur in animals where they shape altruistic behavior towards relatives. More recently, studies have found that kin recognition and altered behavior towards kin can also occur in plants. However, inferring the underlying mechanism responsible for variation in plant performance in experimental studies is challenging as often, results can be explained by alternative and non‐exclusive mechanisms such as niche differences, kin competition avoidance and genetic variation in growth rate and competitive ability. Plant–plant interactions may change with the life stage of plants, and competition is often most intense towards the end of plants growing season. However, changes in plant–plant interaction intensity across plants life cycle are rarely considered in kin interaction studies. Here, we adapt a model of plant growth over time modified to specifically include effects of kin and non‐kin competition. The model decompose competitive interactions at different stages during plant growth from initial growth to the end of the growing season. It estimates genotype specific variation in growth rate, and how sensitive individual genotypes are to competition from neighbors. Furthermore, it estimates size asymmetry among plants accounting for both variation in growth rate, neighbor relatedness and resource variation (here water availability). We use this model to analyze the results from a competition experiment where plants grew in mini‐populations with neighbor plants that were either kin or non‐kin. We find that when applied to our experiments, this approach can disentangle kin effects from other effects caused by genotypic variation in growth rate and competitive response to neighbors, and thus significantly help to detect whether plants exhibit kin‐cooperative behavior.