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

Isbell, Forest; Manning, Pete; Connolly, John; Bruelheide, Helge; Ebeling, Anne; Roscher, Christiane; van Ruijven, Jasper; Weigelt, Alexandra; Wilsey, Brian; Beierkuhnlein, Carl; de Luca, Enrica; Griffin, John N.; Hautier, Yann; Hector, Andy; Jentsch, Anke; Kreyling, Jürgen; Lanta, Vojtech; Loreau, Michel; Meyer, Sebastian T.; Mori, Akira S.; ... (2016). Plant diversity effects on grassland productivity are robust to both nutrient enrichment and drought. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society. Series B - biological sciences, 371(1694) Royal Society of London 10.1098/rstb.2015.0277

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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.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) > Plant Ecology

UniBE Contributor:

Manning, Peter

Subjects:

500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany)

ISSN:

0962-8436

Publisher:

Royal Society of London

Language:

English

Submitter:

Peter Alfred von Ballmoos-Haas

Date Deposited:

18 May 2016 10:41

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:56

Publisher DOI:

10.1098/rstb.2015.0277

PubMed ID:

27114579

Uncontrolled Keywords:

plant diversity; global change drivers; resource amendment; resource reduction; soil nutrients; drought

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.82037

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/82037

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