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Relationship between reproductive allocation and relative abundance among 32 species of a Tibetan alpine meadow: effects of fertilization and grazing.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Understanding the relationship between species traits and species abundance is an important goal in ecology and biodiversity science. Although theoretical studies predict that traits related to performance (e.g. reproductive allocation) are most directly linked to species abundance within a community, empirical investigations have rarely been done. It also remains unclear how environmental factors such as grazing or fertilizer application affect the predicted relationship. METHODOLOGY:We conducted a 3-year field experiment in a Tibetan alpine meadow to assess the relationship between plant reproductive allocation (RA) and species relative abundance (SRA) on control, grazed and fertilized plots. Overall, the studied plant community contained 32 common species. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:At the treatment level, (i) RA was negatively correlated with SRA on control plots and during the first year on fertilized plots. (ii) No negative RA-SRA correlations were observed on grazed plots and during the second and third year on fertilized plots. (iii) Seed size was positively correlated with SRA on control plots. At the plot level, the correlation between SRA and RA were not affected by treatment, year or species composition. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:Our study shows that the performance-related trait RA can negatively affect SRA within communities, which is possibly due to the tradeoffs between clonal growth (for space occupancy) and sexual reproduction. We propose that if different species occupy different positions along these tradeoffs it will contribute to biodiversity maintenance in local communities or even at lager scale.

SUBMITTER: Niu K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3334899 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Relationship between reproductive allocation and relative abundance among 32 species of a Tibetan alpine meadow: effects of fertilization and grazing.

Niu Kechang K Schmid Bernhard B Choler Philippe P Du Guozhen G

PloS one 20120419 4

<h4>Background</h4>Understanding the relationship between species traits and species abundance is an important goal in ecology and biodiversity science. Although theoretical studies predict that traits related to performance (e.g. reproductive allocation) are most directly linked to species abundance within a community, empirical investigations have rarely been done. It also remains unclear how environmental factors such as grazing or fertilizer application affect the predicted relationship.<h4> ...[more]

PMID: 22536385

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Project description:Domestic livestock grazing has caused dramatic changes in plant community composition across the globe. However, the response of plant species abundance in communities subject to grazing has not often been investigated through a functional lens, especially for belowground traits. Grazing directly impacts aboveground plant tissues, but the relationships between above- and belowground traits, and their influence on species abundance are also not well known. We collected plant trait and species relative abundance data in the grazed and nongrazed meadow plant communities in a species-rich subalpine ecosystem of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. We measured three aboveground traits (leaf photosynthesis rate, specific leaf area, and maximum height) and five belowground traits (root average diameter, root biomass, specific root length, root tissue density, and specific root area). We tested for shifts in the relationship between species relative abundance and among all measured traits under grazing compared with the nongrazed meadow. We also compared the power of above- and belowground traits to predict species relative abundance. We observed a significant shift from a resource conservation strategy to a resource acquisition strategy. Moreover, this resource conservation versus resource acquisition trade-off can also determine species relative abundance in the grazed and nongrazed plant communities. Specifically, abundant species in the nongrazed meadow had aboveground and belowground traits that are associated with high resource conservation, whereas aboveground and belowground traits that are correlated with high resource acquisition determined species relative abundance in the grazed meadow. However, belowground traits were found to explain more variances in species relative abundance than aboveground traits in the nongrazed meadow, while aboveground and belowground traits had comparable predictive power in the grazed meadow. We show that species relative abundance in both the grazed and the nongrazed meadows can be predicted by both aboveground traits and belowground traits associated with a resource acquisition versus conservation trade-off. More importantly, we show that belowground traits have higher predictive power of species relative abundance than aboveground traits in the nongrazed meadow, whereas in the grazed meadows, above- and belowground traits had comparable high predictive power.

Project description:Biomass allocation is an essential concept for understanding above- vs. below-ground functions and for predicting the dynamics of community structure and ecosystem service under ongoing climate change. There is rare available knowledge of grazing effects on biomass allocation in multiple zonal alpine grassland types along climatic gradients across the Northern Tibetan Plateau. We collected the peak above- and below-ground biomass (AGB and BGB) values at 106 pairs of well-matched grazed vs. fenced sites during summers of 2010-2013, of which 33 pairs were subject to meadow, 52 to steppe and 21 to desert-steppe. The aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) was represented by the peak AGB while the belowground net primary productivity (BNPP) was estimated from ANPP, the ratio of living vs. dead BGB, and the root turnover rate. Two-ways analyses of variance (ANOVA) and paired samples comparisons with t-test were applied to examine the effects of pasture managements (PMS, i.e., grazed vs. fenced) and zonal grassland types on both ANPP and BNPP. Allometric and isometric allocation hypotheses were also tested between logarithmically transformed ANPP and BNPP using standardized major axis (SMA) analyses across grazed, fenced and overall sites. In our study, a high community-dependency was observed to support the allometric biomass allocation hypothesis, in association with decreased ANPP and a decreasing-to-increasing BNPP proportions with increasing aridity across the Northern Tibetan Plateau. Grazing vs. fencing seemed to have a trivial effect on ANPP compared to the overwhelming influence of different zonal grassland types. Vegetation links above- and below-ground ecological functions through integrated meta-population adaptive strategies to the increasing severity of habitat conditions. Therefore, more detailed studies on functional diversity are essentially to achieve conservation and sustainability goals under ongoing climatic warming and intensifying human influences.

Dataset Information

Relationship between reproductive allocation and relative abundance among 32 species of a Tibetan alpine meadow: effects of fertilization and grazing.

Publications

Relationship between reproductive allocation and relative abundance among 32 species of a Tibetan alpine meadow: effects of fertilization and grazing.

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