Fig. 2: Effects of natural enemies, conspecific adult density, and plant species’ mycorrhizal association type or shade tolerance status on seedling recruitment.

a, d Parameter estimates from Generalized Linear Mixed Effects Models (GLMM) fitted to estimate the effects of pesticide application, conspecific adult density (A.con), mycorrhizal association, or shade tolerance (shade-intolerance coefficient indicated as S.int) and the two- and three-way interactions. Solid points indicate parameter estimates that are significantly different (P < 0.05) from zero (dashed lines) and bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. b, c The relationships between conspecific neighboring adult densities and seedling recruitment under each treatment for EM and AM species, respectively. e, f The relationships between conspecific neighboring adult densities and seedling recruitment under each treatment for shade-tolerant and shade-intolerant species. Lines and shaded polygons indicate the GLMM predictions and their 95% confidence intervals. Dots and bars represent the mean and SE of the observed values, which were calculated by adding model residuals to the predicted values. We averaged the observed values within bins to facilitate visualization (with bin width increasing as the conspecific crowding index decreases). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.