Experimental evidence that evolutionarily diverse assemblages result in higher productivity.

ABSTRACT: There now is ample experimental evidence that speciose assemblages are more productive and provide a greater amount of ecosystem services than depauperate ones. However, these experiments often conclude that there is a higher probability of including complementary species combinations in assemblages with more species and lack a priori prediction about which species combinations maximize function. Here, I report the results of an experiment manipulating the evolutionary relatedness of constituent plant species across a richness gradient. I show that assemblages with distantly related species contributed most to the higher biomass production in multispecies assemblages, through species complementarity. Species produced more biomass than predicted from their monocultures when they were in plo

SUBMITTER: Cadotte MW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3670319 | biostudies-literature | 2013 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature