A Experimental design: forty 0.25 m² plots were evenly distributed among four plant beds, with a minimum spacing of 1 m between plots. The plant beds were filled with Red-Yellow Latosol, a common soil type in the Brazilian savannas (cerrado), and exposed to natural rainfall and sunlight. Competition treatments were randomly assigned to the plots. B Treatment setup: in each treatment, a focal individual of Urochloa decumbens grew with eight individuals of different neighbor species: A. fastigiatus (A), L. aurea (L), a mixture of A. fastigiatus and L. aurea (M), and U. decumbens (U; a control treatment). In treatments involving native species, U. decumbens seeds were planted in the center of the plot and surrounded by eight individuals of native cerrado species. In the mixture treatment (M), A. fastigiatus and L. aurea individuals were alternately arranged around the U. decumbens focal individual (see panels 1 and 2 for the spatial arrangement of the nine spots). Approximately five to ten seeds of each species were sown in each spot. Only the first seedling to germinate was retained, with the others removed to maintain one plant per species per spot. After 4 months, the focal U. decumbens individual in all treatments were harvested, and their aboveground dry biomass and total seed weight were measured. Images L, M, and A depict treatments with L. aurea, the mixture, and A. fastigiatus, respectively, taken 2 months after planting