Dataset Information

Plant diversity effects on grassland productivity are robust to both nutrient enrichment and drought.

ABSTRACT: Global change drivers are rapidly altering resource availability and biodiversity. While there is consensus that greater biodiversity increases the functioning of ecosystems, the extent to which biodiversity buffers ecosystem productivity in response to changes in resource availability remains unclear. We use data from 16 grassland experiments across North America and Europe that manipulated plant species richness and one of two essential resources-soil nutrients or water-to assess the direction and strength of the interaction between plant diversity and resource alteration on above-ground productivity and net biodiversity, complementarity, and selection effects. Despite strong increases in productivity with nutrient addition and decreases in productivity with drought, we found that resource alterations did not alter biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships. Our results suggest that these relationships are largely determined by increases in complementarity effects along plant species richness gradients. Although nutrient addition reduced complementarity effects at high diversity, this appears to be due to high biomass in monocultures under nutrient enrichment. Our results indicate that diversity and the complementarity of species are important regulators of grassland ecosystem productivity, regardless of changes in other drivers of ecosystem function.

SUBMITTER: Craven D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4843698 | biostudies-other | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Plant diversity effects on grassland productivity are robust to both nutrient enrichment and drought.

Craven Dylan D Isbell Forest F Manning Pete P Connolly John J Bruelheide Helge H Ebeling Anne A Roscher Christiane C van Ruijven Jasper J Weigelt Alexandra A Wilsey Brian B Beierkuhnlein Carl C de Luca Enrica E Griffin John N JN Hautier Yann Y Hector Andy A Jentsch Anke A Kreyling Jürgen J Lanta Vojtech V Loreau Michel M Meyer Sebastian T ST Mori Akira S AS Naeem Shahid S Palmborg Cecilia C Polley H Wayne HW Reich Peter B PB Schmid Bernhard B Siebenkäs Alrun A Seabloom Eric E Thakur Madhav P MP Tilman David D Vogel Anja A Eisenhauer Nico N

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 20160501 1694

Global change drivers are rapidly altering resource availability and biodiversity. While there is consensus that greater biodiversity increases the functioning of ecosystems, the extent to which biodiversity buffers ecosystem productivity in response to changes in resource availability remains unclear. We use data from 16 grassland experiments across North America and Europe that manipulated plant species richness and one of two essential resources-soil nutrients or water-to assess the direction ...[more]

PMID: 27114579

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Project description:Drought can occur at different times during the grassland growing season, likely having contrasting effects on forage production when happening early or later in the season. However, knowledge about the interacting effects of the timing of drought and the development stage of the vegetation during the growing season is still scarce, thus limiting our ability to accurately predict forage quantity losses. To investigate plant community responses to drought seasonality (early- vs. late-season), we established a drought experiment in two permanent grasslands of the Swiss Jura Mountains that are used for forage production. We measured three plant functional traits, including two leaf traits related to plant economics (specific leaf area, SLA; leaf dry matter content, LDMC) and one hydraulic trait related to physiological function (predicted percentage loss of hydraulic conductance, PLCp), of the most abundant species, and plant above-ground biomass production. Plant species composition was also determined to calculate community-weighted mean (CWM) traits. First, we observed that CWM trait values strongly varied during the growing season. Second, we found that late-season drought had stronger effects on CWM trait values than early-season drought and that the plant hydraulic trait was the most variable functional trait. Using a structural equation model, we also showed that reduction in soil moisture had no direct impacts on above-ground biomass production. Instead, we observed that the drought-induced decrease in above-ground biomass production was mediated by a higher CWM PLCp (i.e. higher risk of hydraulic failure) and lower CWM SLA under drought. Change in CWM SLA in response to drought was the best predictor of community above-ground biomass production. Our findings reveal the importance of drought timing together with the plant trait responses to assess drought impacts on grassland biomass production and suggest that incorporating these factors into mechanistic models could considerably improve predictions of climate change impacts.

Dataset Information

Plant diversity effects on grassland productivity are robust to both nutrient enrichment and drought.

Publications

Plant diversity effects on grassland productivity are robust to both nutrient enrichment and drought.

Similar Datasets

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