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Does land-use intensification decrease plant phylogenetic diversity in local grasslands?

ABSTRACT: Phylogenetic diversity (PD) has been successfully used as a complement to classical measures of biological diversity such as species richness or functional diversity. By considering the phylogenetic history of species, PD broadly summarizes the trait space within a community. This covers amongst others complex physiological or biochemical traits that are often not considered in estimates of functional diversity, but may be important for the understanding of community assembly and the relationship between diversity and ecosystem functions. In this study we analyzed the relationship between PD of plant communities and land-use intensification in 150 local grassland plots in three regions in Germany. Specifically we asked whether PD decreases with land-use intensification and if so, whether the relationship is robust across different regions. Overall, we found that species richness decreased along land-use gradients the results however differed for common and rare species assemblages. PD only weakly decreased with increasing land-use intensity. The strength of the relationship thereby varied among regions and PD metrics used. From our results we suggest that there is no general relationship between PD and land-use intensification probably due to lack of phylogenetic conservatism in land-use sensitive traits. Nevertheless, we suggest that depending on specific regional idiosyncrasies the consideration of PD as a complement to other measures of diversity can be useful.

SUBMITTER: Egorov E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4111588 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Does land-use intensification decrease plant phylogenetic diversity in local grasslands?

Egorov Eugen E Prati Daniel D Durka Walter W Michalski Stefan S Fischer Markus M Schmitt Barbara B Blaser Stefan S Brändle Martin M

PloS one 20140725 7

Phylogenetic diversity (PD) has been successfully used as a complement to classical measures of biological diversity such as species richness or functional diversity. By considering the phylogenetic history of species, PD broadly summarizes the trait space within a community. This covers amongst others complex physiological or biochemical traits that are often not considered in estimates of functional diversity, but may be important for the understanding of community assembly and the relationshi ...[more]

PMID: 25061934

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Project description:Grassland biodiversity is vulnerable to land use change. How to best manage semi-natural grasslands for maintaining biodiversity is still unclear in many cases because land-use processes may depend on environmental conditions and the indirect effects of land-use on biodiversity mediated by altered abiotic and biotic factors are rarely considered. Here we evaluate the relative importance of the direct and indirect effects of grazing intensity on plant communities along an elevational gradient on a large topographic scale in the Eastern Carpathians in Ukraine. We sampled for two years 31 semi-natural grasslands exposed to cattle grazing. Within each grassland site we measured plant community properties such as the number of species, functional groups, and the proportion of species undesirable for grazing. In addition, we recorded cattle density (as a proxy for grazing intensity), soil properties (bare soil exposure, soil organic carbon, and soil pH) and densities of soil decomposers (earthworms and soil microorganisms). We used structural equation modelling to explore the direct and indirect effects of grazing intensity on plant communities along the elevation gradient. We found that cattle density decreased plant species and functional diversity but increased the proportion of undesirable species. Some of these effects were directly linked to grazing intensity (i.e., species richness), while others (i.e., functional diversity and proportion of undesirable species) were mediated via bare soil exposure. Although grazing intensity decreased with elevation, the effects of grazing on the plant community did not change along the elevation gradient. Generally, elevation had a strong positive direct effect on plant species richness as well as a negative indirect effect, mediated via altered soil acidity and decreased decomposer density. Our results indicate that plant diversity and composition are controlled by the complex interplay among grazing intensity and changing environmental conditions along an elevation gradient. Furthermore, we found lower soil pH, organic carbon and decomposer density with elevation, indicating that the effects of grazing on soil and related ecosystem functions and services in semi-natural grasslands may be more pronounced with elevation. This demonstrates that we need to account for environmental gradients when attempting to generalize effects of land-use intensity on biodiversity.

Project description:Mountain grasslands have recently been exposed to substantial changes in land use and climate and in the near future will likely face an increased frequency of extreme droughts. To date, how the drought responses of carbon (C) allocation, a key process in the C cycle, are affected by land-use changes in mountain grassland is not known.We performed an experimental summer drought on an abandoned grassland and a traditionally managed hay meadow and traced the fate of recent assimilates through the plant-soil continuum. We applied two 13 CO 2 pulses, at peak drought and in the recovery phase shortly after rewetting.Drought decreased total C uptake in both grassland types and led to a loss of above-ground carbohydrate storage pools. The below-ground C allocation to root sucrose was enhanced by drought, especially in the meadow, which also held larger root carbohydrate storage pools.The microbial community of the abandoned grassland comprised more saprotrophic fungal and Gram(+) bacterial markers compared to the meadow. Drought increased the newly introduced AM and saprotrophic (A+S) fungi:bacteria ratio in both grassland types. At peak drought, the 13C transfer into AM and saprotrophic fungi, and Gram(-) bacteria was more strongly reduced in the meadow than in the abandoned grassland, which contrasted the patterns of the root carbohydrate pools.In both grassland types, the C allocation largely recovered after rewetting. Slowest recovery was found for AM fungi and their 13C uptake. In contrast, all bacterial markers quickly recovered C uptake. In the meadow, where plant nitrate uptake was enhanced after drought, C uptake was even higher than in control plots. Synthesis. Our results suggest that resistance and resilience (i.e. recovery) of plant C dynamics and plant-microbial interactions are negatively related, that is, high resistance is followed by slow recovery and vice versa. The abandoned grassland was more resistant to drought than the meadow and possibly had a stronger link to AM fungi that could have provided better access to water through the hyphal network. In contrast, meadow communities strongly reduced C allocation to storage and C transfer to the microbial community in the drought phase, but in the recovery phase invested C resources in the bacterial communities to gain more nutrients for regrowth. We conclude that the management of mountain grasslands increases their resilience to drought.

Dataset Information

Does land-use intensification decrease plant phylogenetic diversity in local grasslands?

Publications

Does land-use intensification decrease plant phylogenetic diversity in local grasslands?

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