Dataset Information

Linking Changes to Intraspecific Trait Diversity to Community Functional Diversity and Biomass in Response to Snow and Nitrogen Addition Within an Inner Mongolian Grassland.

ABSTRACT: In recent years, both the intraspecific and interspecific functional diversity (FD) of plant communities have been studied with new approaches to improve an understanding about the mechanisms underlying plant species coexistence. Yet, little is known about how global change drivers will impact intraspecific FD and trait overlap among species, and in particular how this may scale to impacts on community level FD and ecosystem functioning. To address this uncertainty, we assessed the direct and indirect responses of specific leaf area (SLA) among both dominant annual and subordinate perennial species to the independent and interactive effects of nitrogen and snow addition within the Inner Mongnolian steppe. More specifically, we investigated the consequences for these responses on plant community FD, trait overlap and biomass. Nitrogen addition increased the biomass of the dominant annual species and as a result increased total community biomass. This occurred despite concurrent decreases in the biomass of subordinate perennial species. Nitrogen addition also increased intraspecific FD and trait overlap of both annual species and perennial species, and consequently increased the degree of trait overlap in SLA at the community level. However, snow addition did not significantly impact intraspecific FD and trait overlap of SLA for perennial species, but increased intraspecific FD and trait overlap of annual species, of which scaled to changes in community level FD. We found that the responses of the dominant annual species to nitrogen and snow additions were generally more sensitive than the subordinate perennial species within the inner Mongolian grassland communities of our study. As a consequence of this sensitivity, the responses of the dominant species largely drove impacts to community FD, trait overlap and community biomass. In total, our study demonstrates that the responses of dominant species in a community to environmental change may drive the initial trajectories of change to community FD and functioning.

SUBMITTER: Mao W

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5348515 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Linking Changes to Intraspecific Trait Diversity to Community Functional Diversity and Biomass in Response to Snow and Nitrogen Addition Within an Inner Mongolian Grassland.

Mao Wei W Felton Andrew J AJ Zhang Tonghui T

Frontiers in plant science 20170314

In recent years, both the intraspecific and interspecific functional diversity (FD) of plant communities have been studied with new approaches to improve an understanding about the mechanisms underlying plant species coexistence. Yet, little is known about how global change drivers will impact intraspecific FD and trait overlap among species, and in particular how this may scale to impacts on community level FD and ecosystem functioning. To address this uncertainty, we assessed the direct and in ...[more]

PMID: 28352278

Similar Datasets

Project description:Functional traits are proxies for plant physiology and performance, which do not only differ between species but also within species. In this work, we hypothesized that (a) with increasing precipitation, the percentage of focal species which significantly respond to changes in grazing intensity increases, while under dry conditions, climate-induced stress is so high that plant species hardly respond to any changes in grazing intensity and that (b) the magnitude with which species change their trait values in response to grazing, reflected by coefficients of variation (CVs), increases with increasing precipitation. Chosen plant traits were canopy height, plant width, specific leaf area (SLA), chlorophyll fluorescence, performance index, stomatal pore area index (SPI), and individual aboveground biomass of 15 species along a precipitation gradient with different grazing intensities in Mongolian rangelands. We used linear models for each trait to assess whether the percentage of species that respond to grazing changes along the precipitation gradient. To test the second hypothesis, we assessed the magnitude of intraspecific trait variability (ITV) response to grazing, per species, trait, and precipitation level by calculating CVs across the different grazing intensities. ITV was most prominent for SLA and SPI under highest precipitation, confirming our first hypothesis. Accordingly, CVs of canopy height, SPI, and SLA increased with increasing precipitation, partly confirming our second hypothesis. CVs of the species over all traits increased with increasing precipitation only for three species. This study shows that it remains challenging to predict how plant performance will shift under changing environmental conditions based on their traits alone. In this context, the implications for the use of community-weighted mean trait values are discussed, as not only species abundances change in response to changing environmental conditions, but also values of traits considerably change. Including this aspect in further studies will improve our understanding of processes acting within and among communities.

Project description:BackgroundNumerous studies have shown that nitrogen (N) deposition decreases biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems. To explain the N-induced species loss, three functionally based hypotheses have been proposed: the aboveground competition hypothesis, the belowground competition hypothesis, and the total competition hypothesis. However, none of them is supported sufficiently by field experiments. A main challenge to testing these hypotheses is to ascertain the role of shoot and root competition in controlling plant responses to N enrichment. Simultaneously examining both aboveground and belowground responses in natural ecosystems is logistically complex, and has rarely been done.Methodology/principal findingsIn a two-year N addition experiment conducted in a natural grassland ecosystem, we investigated both above- and belowground responses of plants at the individual, species, and community levels. Plants differed significantly in their responses to N addition across the different organizational levels. The community-level species loss was mainly due to the loss of perennial grasses and forbs, while the relative abundance of plant species was dependent mainly on individual-level responses. Plasticity in biomass allocation was much smaller within a species than between species, providing a biological basis for explaining the functionally based species loss. All species increased biomass allocation to aboveground parts, but species with high belowground allocations were replaced by those with high aboveground allocations, indicating that the increased aboveground competition was the key process responsible for the observed diversity loss after N addition in this grassland ecosystem.Conclusions/significanceOur findings shed new light on the validity of the three competing hypotheses concerning species loss in response to N enrichment. They also have important implications for predicting the future impacts of N deposition on the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, we have developed a new technique for ascertaining the roles of aboveground and belowground competition in determining plant responses to N fertilization.

Project description:Long-term livestock over-grazing causes nitrogen outputs to exceed inputs in Inner Mongolia, suggesting that low levels of nitrogen fertilization could help restore grasslands degraded by overgrazing. However, the effectiveness of such an approach depends on the response of production and species composition to the interactive drivers of nitrogen and water availability. We conducted a five-year experiment manipulating precipitation (NP: natural precipitation and SWP: simulated wet year precipitation) and nitrogen (0, 25 and 50 kg N ha(-1) yr(-1)) addition in Inner Mongolia. We hypothesized that nitrogen fertilization would increase forage production when water availability was relatively high. However, the extent to which nitrogen would co-limit production under average or below average rainfall in these grasslands was unknown.Aboveground net primary production (ANPP) increased in response to nitrogen when precipitation was similar to or higher than the long-term average, but not when precipitation was below average. This shift in limitation was also reflected by water and nitrogen use efficiency. Belowground live biomass significantly increased with increasing water availability, but was not affected by nitrogen addition. Under natural precipitation (NP treatment), the inter-annual variation of ANPP was 3-fold greater than with stable water availability (CV(ANPP) = 61±6% and 17±3% for NP and SWP treatment, respectively) and nitrogen addition increased CV(ANPP) even more (89±14%). This occurred in part because fertilizer nitrogen left in the soil in dry years remained available for uptake during wet years and because of high production by unpalatable annual species in wet years in the NP treatment. In summary, plant growth by residual fertilizer nitrogen could lead to sufficient yields to offset lack of additional production in dry years. However, the utility of fertilization for restoration may be constrained by shifts in species composition and the lack of response by belowground biomass, which reduces replacement of soil carbon and nitrogen.

Dataset Information

Linking Changes to Intraspecific Trait Diversity to Community Functional Diversity and Biomass in Response to Snow and Nitrogen Addition Within an Inner Mongolian Grassland.

Publications

Linking Changes to Intraspecific Trait Diversity to Community Functional Diversity and Biomass in Response to Snow and Nitrogen Addition Within an Inner Mongolian Grassland.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets