Soil community history strengthens belowground multitrophic functioning across plant diversity levels in a grassland experiment.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity experiments revealed that plant diversity loss can decrease ecosystem functions across trophic levels. To address why such biodiversity-function relationships strengthen over time, we established experimental mesocosms replicating a gradient in plant species richness across treatments of shared versus non-shared history of (1) the plant community and (2) the soil fauna community. After 4 months, we assessed the multitrophic functioning of soil fauna via biomass stocks and energy fluxes across the food webs. We find that soil community history significantly enhanced belowground multitrophic function via changes in biomass stocks and community-average body masses across the food webs. However, variation in plant diversity and plant community history had unclear effects. Our find

SUBMITTER: Amyntas A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11577027 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature