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Biodiversity-stability relationships strengthen over time in a long-term grassland experiment.

ABSTRACT: Numerous studies have demonstrated that biodiversity drives ecosystem functioning, yet how biodiversity loss alters ecosystems functioning and stability in the long-term lacks experimental evidence. We report temporal effects of species richness on community productivity, stability, species asynchrony, and complementarity, and how the relationships among them change over 17 years in a grassland biodiversity experiment. Productivity declined more rapidly in less diverse communities resulting in temporally strengthening positive effects of richness on productivity, complementarity, and stability. In later years asynchrony played a more important role in increasing community stability as the negative effect of richness on population stability diminished. Only during later years did species complementarity relate to species asynchrony. These results show that species complementarity and asynchrony can take more than a decade to develop strong stabilizing effects on ecosystem functioning in diverse plant communities. Thus, the mechanisms stabilizing ecosystem functioning change with community age.

SUBMITTER: Wagg C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9751076 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Biodiversity-stability relationships strengthen over time in a long-term grassland experiment.

Wagg Cameron C Roscher Christiane C Weigelt Alexandra A Vogel Anja A Ebeling Anne A de Luca Enrica E Roeder Anna A Kleinspehn Clemens C Temperton Vicky M VM Meyer Sebastian T ST Scherer-Lorenzen Michael M Buchmann Nina N Fischer Markus M Weisser Wolfgang W WW Eisenhauer Nico N Schmid Bernhard B

Nature communications 20221214 1

Numerous studies have demonstrated that biodiversity drives ecosystem functioning, yet how biodiversity loss alters ecosystems functioning and stability in the long-term lacks experimental evidence. We report temporal effects of species richness on community productivity, stability, species asynchrony, and complementarity, and how the relationships among them change over 17 years in a grassland biodiversity experiment. Productivity declined more rapidly in less diverse communities resulting in t ...[more]

PMID: 36517483

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Project description:Long-term biodiversity experiments have shown increasing strengths of biodiversity effects on plant productivity over time. However, little is known about rapid evolutionary processes in response to plant community diversity, which could contribute to explaining the strengthening positive relationship. To address this issue, we performed a transplant experiment with offspring of seeds collected from four grass species in a 14-year-old biodiversity experiment (Jena Experiment). We used two- and six-species communities and removed the vegetation of the study plots to exclude plant-plant interactions. In a reciprocal design, we transplanted five "home" phytometers (same origin and actual environment), five "away-same" phytometers (same species richness of origin and actual environment, but different plant composition), and five "away-different" phytometers (different species richness of origin and actual environment) of the same species in the study plots. In the establishment year, plants transplanted in home soil produced more shoots than plants in away soil indicating that plant populations at low and high diversity developed differently over time depending on their associated soil community and/or conditions. In the second year, offspring of individuals selected at high diversity generally had a higher performance (biomass production and fitness) than offspring of individuals selected at low diversity, regardless of the transplant environment. This suggests that plants at low and high diversity showed rapid evolutionary responses measurable in their phenotype. Our findings provide first empirical evidence that loss of productivity at low diversity is not only caused by changes in abiotic and biotic conditions but also that plants respond to this by a change in their micro-evolution. Thus, we conclude that eco-evolutionary feedbacks of plants at low and high diversity are critical to fully understand why the positive influence of diversity on plant productivity is strengthening through time.

Project description:We compared the results of a long-term (65 years) experiment in a South African grassland with the world's longest-running ecological experiment, the Park Grass study at Rothamsted, U.K. The climate is warm and humid in South Africa and cool and temperate in England. The African grassland has been fertilized with two forms of nitrogen applied at four levels, phosphorus and lime in a crossed design in 96 plots. In 1951, about 84% of plant cover consisted of Themeda triandra, Tristachya leucothrix and Setaria nigrirostris. Currently, the dominant species are Panicum maximum, Setaria sphacelata and Eragrostis curvula, making up 71% of total biomass. As in the Park Grass experiment, we found a significant (additive) interaction effect on ANPP of nitrogen and phosphorus, and a (marginally significant) negative correlation between ANPP and species richness. Unlike the Park Grass experiment, there was no correlation between ANPP and species richness when pH was included as a covariate. There was also a significant negative effect of nitrogen amount and nitrogen form and a positive effect of lime on species richness and species diversity. Soil pH had an important effect on species richness. Liming was insufficient to balance the negative effects on species richness of nitrogen fertilization. There was a significant effect of pH on biomass of three abundant species. There were also significant effects of light on the biomass of four species, with only Panicum maximum having a negative response to light. In all of the abundant species, adding total species richness and ANPP to the model increased the amount of variance explained. The biomass of Eragrostis curvula and P. maximum were negatively correlated with species richness while three other abundant species increased with species richness, suggesting that competition and facilitation were active. Consistent with the results from the Park Grass and other long-term fertilization experiments of grasslands, we found a positive effect of soil pH and a negative effect of nitrogen amount on species richness, a more acutely negative effect on species richness of acidic ammonium sulphate fertilizer than limestone ammonium nitrate, a negative relationship between species richness and biomass, and a positive effect on species richness of lime interacting with nitrogen.

Project description:The increasing strength of positive biodiversity effects on plant community productivity, observed in long-term biodiversity experiments, relates to mixed responses at the species level. However, it is still not well understood if the observed mixed responses are adaptations to the different selection pressures in plant communities of different diversity or plastic adjustments. We conducted a transplant experiment for nine plant species in a 17-year-old biodiversity experiment (Jena Experiment). We used offspring of plants selected in the biodiversity experiment and from plants without selection in the experiment (naïve). In a Community History Experiment, offspring of selected plants were planted in three test environments: their original plant communities with old soil (of the long-term Jena Experiment), newly assembled plant communities with old soil, and newly assembled plant communities with new soil. In a Selection Experiment, we compared selected plants with naïve plants, both grown in the selected plants' original environment. In all test environments, increasing species richness was associated with a decrease in plant individual biomass, reproductive output, relative growth rate, plant height, leaf greenness, and leaf nitrogen concentration, and an increase in specific leaf area (SLA). In the Selection Experiment, selected plants had a weaker decline in biomass, taller stature, and higher leaf carbon and nitrogen concentrations than naïve plants with increasing species richness. In the Community History Experiment, survival was lower, while plant height, SLA, leaf nitrogen, and carbon concentrations were highest in the test environment with new plants and soil. However, in high-diversity communities, individuals produced more biomass, grew taller, and had higher leaf greenness in their original environment. Overall, we found that, despite the crucial role of phenotypic plasticity for trait adjustments to the actual environment, selection in the biodiversity experiment produced adaptive phenotypic responses, largely explained by plant community history and positive plant-soil feedbacks established over time.

Project description:UnlabelledSpatial scaling is a critical issue in ecology, but how anthropogenic activities like fertilization affect spatial scaling is poorly understood, especially for microbial communities. Here, we determined the effects of long-term fertilization on the spatial scaling of microbial functional diversity and its relationships to plant diversity in the 150-year-old Park Grass Experiment, the oldest continuous grassland experiment in the world. Nested samples were taken from plots with contrasting inorganic fertilization regimes, and community DNAs were analyzed using the GeoChip-based functional gene array. The slopes of microbial gene-area relationships (GARs) and plant species-area relationships (SARs) were estimated in a plot receiving nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) and a control plot without fertilization. Our results indicated that long-term inorganic fertilization significantly increased both microbial GARs and plant SARs. Microbial spatial turnover rates (i.e., z values) were less than 0.1 and were significantly higher in the fertilized plot (0.0583) than in the control plot (0.0449) (P < 0.0001). The z values also varied significantly with different functional genes involved in carbon (C), N, P, and sulfur (S) cycling and with various phylogenetic groups (archaea, bacteria, and fungi). Similarly, the plant SARs increased significantly (P < 0.0001), from 0.225 in the control plot to 0.419 in the fertilized plot. Soil fertilization, plant diversity, and spatial distance had roughly equal contributions in shaping the microbial functional community structure, while soil geochemical variables contributed less. These results indicated that long-term agricultural practice could alter the spatial scaling of microbial biodiversity.ImportanceDetermining the spatial scaling of microbial biodiversity and its response to human activities is important but challenging in microbial ecology. Most studies to date are based on different sites that may not be truly comparable or on short-term perturbations, and hence, the results observed could represent transient responses. This study examined the spatial patterns of microbial communities in response to different fertilization regimes at the Rothamsted Research Experimental Station, which has become an invaluable resource for ecologists, environmentalists, and soil scientists. The current study is the first showing that long-term fertilization has dramatic impacts on the spatial scaling of microbial communities. By identifying the spatial patterns in response to long-term fertilization and their underlying mechanisms, this study makes fundamental contributions to predictive understanding of microbial biogeography.

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Biodiversity-stability relationships strengthen over time in a long-term grassland experiment.

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Biodiversity-stability relationships strengthen over time in a long-term grassland experiment.

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