Dataset Information

Legume Plants Enhance the Resistance of Soil to Ecosystem Disturbance.

ABSTRACT: Cultivation of legume plants is well known to improve soil N level and net primary productivity; besides, it may deliver other ecosystem benefits such as increasing soil carbon sequestration and soil food web complexity. However, little is known about whether legumes can improve the resistance of soils to ecosystem disturbances. In the present study, we compared the resistance of soils to an ecosystem disturbance (understory removal) in the presence or absence of a legume species (Cassia alata) in mixed tree species plantations in southern China. Soil physico-chemical and biotic properties were employed to quantify the resistance of soils to understory removal. Our results showed that the resistance indices of soil water content, omnivorous-predacious nematode abundance and nematode channel index to understory removal were greater in the presence of legumes than those without legumes in wet season. The resistance indices of fungal to bacterial ratio, fungivorous nematode abundance and total arthropod abundance were greater in the presence of legume than those without legume species in dry season. Our results indicate that legumes may enhance the resistances of soil physico-chemical and biological properties to the ecosystem disturbance. Our findings could provide a better understanding of the myriad ways in which legumes can positively affect ecosystem functioning.

SUBMITTER: Gao D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5519628 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Legume Plants Enhance the Resistance of Soil to Ecosystem Disturbance.

Gao Dandan D Wang Xiaoling X Fu Shenglei S Zhao Jie J

Frontiers in plant science 20170721

Cultivation of legume plants is well known to improve soil N level and net primary productivity; besides, it may deliver other ecosystem benefits such as increasing soil carbon sequestration and soil food web complexity. However, little is known about whether legumes can improve the resistance of soils to ecosystem disturbances. In the present study, we compared the resistance of soils to an ecosystem disturbance (understory removal) in the presence or absence of a legume species (<i>Cassia alat ...[more]

PMID: 28785277

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Project description:Recovery of an ecosystem following disturbance can be severely hampered or even shift altogether when a point disturbance exceeds a certain spatial threshold. Such scale-dependent dynamics may be caused by preemptive competition, but may also result from diminished self-facilitation due to weakened ecosystem engineering. Moreover, disturbance can facilitate colonization by engineering species that alter abiotic conditions in ways that exacerbate stress on the original species. Consequently, establishment of such counteracting engineers might reduce the spatial threshold for the disturbance, by effectively slowing recovery and increasing the risk for ecosystem shifts to alternative states. We tested these predictions in an intertidal mudflat characterized by a two-state mosaic of hummocks (humps exposed during low tide) dominated by the sediment-stabilizing seagrass Zostera noltii) and hollows (low-tide waterlogged depressions dominated by the bioturbating lugworm Arenicola marina). In contrast to expectations, seagrass recolonized both natural and experimental clearings via lateral expansion and seemed unaffected by both clearing size and lugworm addition. Near the end of the growth season, however, an additional disturbance (most likely waterfowl grazing and/or strong hydrodynamics) selectively impacted recolonizing seagrass in the largest (1 m(2)) clearings (regardless of lugworm addition), and in those medium (0.25 m(2)) clearings where lugworms had been added nearly five months earlier. Further analyses showed that the risk for the disturbance increased with hollow size, with a threshold of 0.24 m(2). Hollows of that size were caused by seagrass removal alone in the largest clearings, and by a weaker seagrass removal effect exacerbated by lugworm bioturbation in the medium clearings. Consequently, a sufficiently large disturbance increased the vulnerability of recolonizing seagrass to additional disturbance by weakening seagrass engineering effects (sediment stabilization). Meanwhile, the counteracting ecosystem engineering (lugworm bioturbation) reduced that threshold size. Therefore, scale-dependent interactions between habitat-mediated facilitation, competition and disturbance seem to maintain the spatial two-state mosaic in this ecosystem.

Dataset Information

Legume Plants Enhance the Resistance of Soil to Ecosystem Disturbance.

Publications

Legume Plants Enhance the Resistance of Soil to Ecosystem Disturbance.

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