Interspecific neighbor interactions promote the positive diversity-productivity relationship in experimental grassland communities.

ABSTRACT: Because the frequency of heterospecific interactions inevitably increases with species richness in a community, biodiversity effects must be expressed by such interactions. However, little is understood how heterospecific interactions affect ecosystem productivity because rarely are biodiversity ecosystem functioning experiments spatially explicitly manipulated. To test the effect of heterospecific interactions on productivity, direct evidence of heterospecific neighborhood interaction is needed. In this study we conducted experiments with a detailed spatial design to investigate whether and how heterospecific neighborhood interactions promote primary productivity in a grassland community. The results showed that increasing the heterospecific: conspecific contact ratio significantly increa

SUBMITTER: Zhang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4211843 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature