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Grazing alters species relative abundance by affecting plant functional traits in a Tibetan subalpine meadow.

ABSTRACT: 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.

SUBMITTER: He Q

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8366865 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:It is widely recognized that colonists and competitors dominate early and late succession, respectively, with selected species having different colonizing and competitive abilities. However, it remains unknown whether colonizing and competitive ability can determine species abundance directly over succession. The data for five key functional traits were collected (photosynthesis rate, leaf turgor loss point, leaf proline content, seed mass, and seed germination rate), which are direct indicators of plant competitive and colonizing abilities including growth, drought and cold stress resistance, dispersal, and seed dormancy. Here, we tested the effects of colonizing and competitive abilities on species abundance, by employing a linear mixed-effects model to examine the shifts in the relationship between species abundance and these five colonization and competition-related traits in species-rich subalpine secondary successional meadows (at 4, 6, 10, 13 years of age, and undisturbed, respectively) of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. The abundant species at the early-successional meadows tend to have high photosynthetic rate, high leaf proline content, low seed mass, and seed germination rate for having high colonizing ability, but low competitive ability. By contrast, late-successional communities tend to be dominated by species with high competitive ability, but low colonizing ability, indicated by large seeds, high seed germination rate, low photosynthetic rate, and leaf proline content. The observed directional shifts in the relationships between traits (photosynthetic rate, leaf proline content, seed mass, and seed germination rate) and abundance with successional age, bring two new understandings of community assembly during succession of subalpine meadows in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. First, it discloses that the differences in species abundance over succession can be directly attributed to differences in colonizing and competitive abilities of different species. Second, it expands the effects of multiple life historical differences including growth, resource competitive ability, cold stress resistance, dispersal, and seed germination strategy, represented by functional traits on community assembly along succession, that is, from the species to the community level.

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Grazing alters species relative abundance by affecting plant functional traits in a Tibetan subalpine meadow.

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