@article {126681, title = {Environmental heterogeneity modulates the effect of plant diversity on the spatial variability of grassland biomass.}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {14}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Mar 31}, pages = {1809}, abstract = {

Plant productivity varies due to environmental heterogeneity, and theory suggests that plant diversity can reduce this variation. While there is strong evidence of diversity effects on temporal variability of productivity, whether this mechanism extends to variability across space remains elusive. Here we determine the relationship between plant diversity and spatial variability of productivity in 83 grasslands, and quantify the effect of experimentally increased spatial heterogeneity in environmental conditions on this relationship. We found that communities with higher plant species richness (alpha and gamma diversity) have lower spatial variability of productivity as reduced abundance of some species can be compensated for by increased abundance of other species. In contrast, high species dissimilarity among local communities (beta diversity) is positively associated with spatial variability of productivity, suggesting that changes in species composition can scale up to affect productivity. Experimentally increased spatial environmental heterogeneity weakens the effect of plant alpha and gamma diversity, and reveals that beta diversity can simultaneously decrease and increase spatial variability of productivity. Our findings unveil the generality of the diversity-stability theory across space, and suggest that reduced local diversity and biotic homogenization can affect the spatial reliability of key ecosystem functions.

}, keywords = {Biodiversity, Biomass, Ecosystem, Grassland, Plants, Reproducibility of Results}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-023-37395-y}, author = {Daleo, Pedro and Alberti, Juan and Chaneton, Enrique J and Iribarne, Oscar and Tognetti, Pedro M and Bakker, Jonathan D and Borer, Elizabeth T and Bruschetti, Mart{\'\i}n and MacDougall, Andrew S and Pascual, Jesus and Sankaran, Mahesh and Seabloom, Eric W and Wang, Shaopeng and Bagchi, Sumanta and Brudvig, Lars A and Catford, Jane A and Dickman, Chris R and Dickson, Timothy L and Donohue, Ian and Eisenhauer, Nico and Gruner, Daniel S and Haider, Sylvia and Jentsch, Anke and Knops, Johannes M H and Lekberg, Ylva and McCulley, Rebecca L and Moore, Joslin L and Mortensen, Brent and Ohlert, Timothy and P{\"a}rtel, Meelis and Peri, Pablo L and Power, Sally A and Risch, Anita C and Rocca, Camila and Smith, Nicholas G and Stevens, Carly and Tamme, Riin and Veen, G F Ciska and Wilfahrt, Peter A and Hautier, Yann} } @article {96101, title = {Negative effects of nitrogen override positive effects of phosphorus on grassland legumes worldwide.}, journal = {Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A}, volume = {118}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 Jul 13}, abstract = {

Anthropogenic nutrient enrichment is driving global biodiversity decline and modifying ecosystem functions. Theory suggests that plant functional types that fix atmospheric nitrogen have a competitive advantage in nitrogen-poor soils, but lose this advantage with increasing nitrogen supply. By contrast, the addition of phosphorus, potassium, and other nutrients may benefit such species in low-nutrient environments by enhancing their nitrogen-fixing capacity. We present a global-scale experiment confirming these predictions for nitrogen-fixing legumes (Fabaceae) across 45 grasslands on six continents. Nitrogen addition reduced legume cover, richness, and biomass, particularly in nitrogen-poor soils, while cover of non-nitrogen-fixing plants increased. The addition of phosphorous, potassium, and other nutrients enhanced legume abundance, but did not mitigate the negative effects of nitrogen addition. Increasing nitrogen supply thus has the potential to decrease the diversity and abundance of grassland legumes worldwide regardless of the availability of other nutrients, with consequences for biodiversity, food webs, ecosystem resilience, and genetic improvement of protein-rich agricultural plant species.

}, issn = {1091-6490}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.2023718118}, author = {Tognetti, Pedro M and Prober, Suzanne M and B{\'a}ez, Selene and Chaneton, Enrique J and Firn, Jennifer and Risch, Anita C and Schuetz, Martin and Simonsen, Anna K and Yahdjian, Laura and Borer, Elizabeth T and Seabloom, Eric W and Arnillas, Carlos Alberto and Bakker, Jonathan D and Brown, Cynthia S and Cadotte, Marc W and Caldeira, Maria C and Daleo, Pedro and Dwyer, John M and Fay, Philip A and Gherardi, Laureano A and Hagenah, Nicole and Hautier, Yann and Komatsu, Kimberly J and McCulley, Rebecca L and Price, Jodi N and Standish, Rachel J and Stevens, Carly J and Wragg, Peter D and Sankaran, Mahesh} } @article {105155, title = {Opposing community assembly patterns for dominant and nondominant plant species in herbaceous ecosystems globally.}, journal = {Ecol Evol}, volume = {11}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 Dec}, pages = {17744-17761}, abstract = {

Biotic and abiotic factors interact with dominant plants-the locally most frequent or with the largest coverage-and nondominant plants differently, partially because dominant plants modify the environment where nondominant plants grow. For instance, if dominant plants compete strongly, they will deplete most resources, forcing nondominant plants into a narrower niche space. Conversely, if dominant plants are constrained by the environment, they might not exhaust available resources but instead may ameliorate environmental stressors that usually limit nondominants. Hence, the nature of interactions among nondominant species could be modified by dominant species. Furthermore, these differences could translate into a disparity in the phylogenetic relatedness among dominants compared to the relatedness among nondominants. By estimating phylogenetic dispersion in 78\ grasslands across five continents, we found that dominant species were clustered (e.g., co-dominant grasses), suggesting dominant species are likely organized by environmental filtering, and that nondominant species were either randomly assembled or overdispersed. Traits showed similar trends for those sites (\<50\%) with sufficient trait data. Furthermore, several lineages scattered in the phylogeny had more nondominant species than expected at random, suggesting that traits common in nondominants are phylogenetically conserved and have evolved multiple times. We also explored environmental drivers of the dominant/nondominant disparity. We found different assembly patterns for dominants and nondominants, consistent with asymmetries in assembly mechanisms. Among the different postulated mechanisms, our results suggest two complementary hypotheses seldom explored: (1) Nondominant species include lineages adapted to thrive in the environment generated by dominant species. (2) Even when dominant species reduce resources to nondominant ones, dominant species could have a stronger positive effect on some nondominants by ameliorating environmental stressors affecting them, than by depleting resources and increasing the environmental stress to those nondominants. These results show that the dominant/nondominant asymmetry has ecological and evolutionary consequences fundamental to understand plant communities.

}, issn = {2045-7758}, doi = {10.1002/ece3.8266}, author = {Arnillas, Carlos Alberto and Borer, Elizabeth T and Seabloom, Eric W and Alberti, Juan and B{\'a}ez, Selene and Bakker, Jonathan D and Boughton, Elizabeth H and Buckley, Yvonne M and Bugalho, Miguel Nuno and Donohue, Ian and Dwyer, John and Firn, Jennifer and Gridzak, Riley and Hagenah, Nicole and Hautier, Yann and Helm, Aveliina and Jentsch, Anke and Knops, Johannes M H and Komatsu, Kimberly J and Laanisto, Lauri and Laungani, Ramesh and McCulley, Rebecca and Moore, Joslin L and Morgan, John W and Peri, Pablo Luis and Power, Sally A and Price, Jodi and Sankaran, Mahesh and Schamp, Brandon and Speziale, Karina and Standish, Rachel and Virtanen, Risto and Cadotte, Marc W} } @article {84576, title = {General destabilizing effects of eutrophication on grassland productivity at multiple spatial scales.}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {11}, year = {2020}, month = {2020 10 23}, pages = {5375}, abstract = {

Eutrophication is a widespread environmental change that usually reduces the stabilizing effect of plant diversity on productivity in local communities. Whether this effect is scale dependent remains to be elucidated. Here, we determine the relationship between plant diversity and temporal stability of productivity for 243 plant communities from 42 grasslands across the globe and quantify the effect of chronic fertilization on these relationships. Unfertilized local communities with more plant species exhibit greater asynchronous dynamics among species in response to natural environmental fluctuations, resulting in greater local stability (alpha stability). Moreover, neighborhood communities that have greater spatial variation in plant species composition within sites (higher beta diversity) have greater spatial asynchrony of productivity among communities, resulting in greater stability at the larger scale (gamma stability). Importantly, fertilization consistently weakens the contribution of plant diversity to both of these stabilizing mechanisms, thus diminishing the positive effect of biodiversity on stability at differing spatial scales. Our findings suggest that preserving grassland functional stability requires conservation of plant diversity within and among ecological communities.

}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-020-19252-4}, author = {Hautier, Yann and Zhang, Pengfei and Loreau, Michel and Wilcox, Kevin R and Seabloom, Eric W and Borer, Elizabeth T and Byrnes, Jarrett E K and Koerner, Sally E and Komatsu, Kimberly J and Lefcheck, Jonathan S and Hector, Andy and Adler, Peter B and Alberti, Juan and Arnillas, Carlos A and Bakker, Jonathan D and Brudvig, Lars A and Bugalho, Miguel N and Cadotte, Marc and Caldeira, Maria C and Carroll, Oliver and Crawley, Mick and Collins, Scott L and Daleo, Pedro and Dee, Laura E and Eisenhauer, Nico and Eskelinen, Anu and Fay, Philip A and Gilbert, Benjamin and Hansar, Amandine and Isbell, Forest and Knops, Johannes M H and MacDougall, Andrew S and McCulley, Rebecca L and Moore, Joslin L and Morgan, John W and Mori, Akira S and Peri, Pablo L and Pos, Edwin T and Power, Sally A and Price, Jodi N and Reich, Peter B and Risch, Anita C and Roscher, Christiane and Sankaran, Mahesh and Sch{\"u}tz, Martin and Smith, Melinda and Stevens, Carly and Tognetti, Pedro M and Virtanen, Risto and Wardle, Glenda M and Wilfahrt, Peter A and Wang, Shaopeng} } @article {27277, title = {Local loss and spatial homogenization of plant diversity reduce ecosystem multifunctionality.}, journal = {Nat Ecol Evol}, volume = {2}, year = {2018}, month = {2017 Dec 04}, pages = {50-56}, abstract = {

Biodiversity is declining in many local communities while also becoming increasingly homogenized across space. Experiments show that local plant species loss reduces ecosystem functioning and services, but the role of spatial homogenization of community composition and the potential interaction between diversity at different scales in maintaining ecosystem functioning remains unclear, especially when many functions are considered (ecosystem multifunctionality). We present an analysis of eight ecosystem functions measured in 65 grasslands worldwide. We find that more diverse grasslands-those with both species-rich local communities (α-diversity) and large compositional differences among localities (β-diversity)-had higher levels of multifunctionality. Moreover, α- and β-diversity synergistically affected multifunctionality, with higher levels of diversity at one scale amplifying the contribution to ecological functions at the other scale. The identity of species influencing ecosystem functioning differed among functions and across local communities, explaining why more diverse grasslands maintained greater functionality when more functions and localities were considered. These results were robust to variation in environmental drivers. Our findings reveal that plant diversity, at both local and landscape scales, contributes to the maintenance of multiple ecosystem services provided by grasslands. Preserving ecosystem functioning therefore requires conservation of biodiversity both within and among ecological communities.

}, issn = {2397-334X}, doi = {10.1038/s41559-017-0395-0}, author = {Hautier, Yann and Isbell, Forest and Borer, Elizabeth T and Seabloom, Eric W and Harpole, W Stanley and Lind, Eric M and MacDougall, Andrew S and Stevens, Carly J and Adler, Peter B and Alberti, Juan and Bakker, Jonathan D and Brudvig, Lars A and Buckley, Yvonne M and Cadotte, Marc and Caldeira, Maria C and Chaneton, Enrique J and Chu, Chengjin and Daleo, Pedro and Dickman, Christopher R and Dwyer, John M and Eskelinen, Anu and Fay, Philip A and Firn, Jennifer and Hagenah, Nicole and Hillebrand, Helmut and Iribarne, Oscar and Kirkman, Kevin P and Knops, Johannes M H and La Pierre, Kimberly J and McCulley, Rebecca L and Morgan, John W and P{\"a}rtel, Meelis and Pascual, Jesus and Price, Jodi N and Prober, Suzanne M and Risch, Anita C and Sankaran, Mahesh and Schuetz, Martin and Standish, Rachel J and Virtanen, Risto and Wardle, Glenda M and Yahdjian, Laura and Hector, Andy} } @article {998, title = {Plant species{\textquoteright} origin predicts dominance and response to nutrient enrichment and herbivores in global grasslands.}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {6}, year = {2015}, month = {2015}, pages = {7710}, abstract = {

Exotic species dominate many communities; however the functional significance of species{\textquoteright} biogeographic origin remains highly contentious. This debate is fuelled in part by the lack of globally replicated, systematic data assessing the relationship between species provenance, function and response to perturbations. We examined the abundance of native and exotic plant species at 64 grasslands in 13 countries, and at a subset of the sites we experimentally tested native and exotic species responses to two fundamental drivers of invasion, mineral nutrient supplies and vertebrate herbivory. Exotic species are six times more likely to dominate communities than native species. Furthermore, while experimental nutrient addition increases the cover and richness of exotic species, nutrients decrease native diversity and cover. Native and exotic species also differ in their response to vertebrate consumer exclusion. These results suggest that species origin has functional significance, and that eutrophication will lead to increased exotic dominance in grasslands.

}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/ncomms8710}, author = {Seabloom, Eric W and Borer, Elizabeth T and Buckley, Yvonne M and Cleland, Elsa E and Davies, Kendi F and Firn, Jennifer and Harpole, W Stanley and Hautier, Yann and Lind, Eric M and MacDougall, Andrew S and Orrock, John L and Prober, Suzanne M and Adler, Peter B and Anderson, T Michael and Bakker, Jonathan D and Biederman, Lori A and Blumenthal, Dana M and Brown, Cynthia S and Brudvig, Lars A and Cadotte, Marc and Chu, Chengjin and Cottingham, Kathryn L and Crawley, Michael J and Damschen, Ellen I and Dantonio, Carla M and DeCrappeo, Nicole M and Du, Guozhen and Fay, Philip A and Frater, Paul and Gruner, Daniel S and Hagenah, Nicole and Hector, Andy and Hillebrand, Helmut and Hofmockel, Kirsten S and Humphries, Hope C and Jin, Virginia L and Kay, Adam and Kirkman, Kevin P and Klein, Julia A and Knops, Johannes M H and La Pierre, Kimberly J and Ladwig, Laura and Lambrinos, John G and Li, Qi and Li, Wei and Marushia, Robin and McCulley, Rebecca L and Melbourne, Brett A and Mitchell, Charles E and Moore, Joslin L and Morgan, John and Mortensen, Brent and O{\textquoteright}Halloran, Lydia R and Pyke, David A and Risch, Anita C and Sankaran, Mahesh and Schuetz, Martin and Simonsen, Anna and Smith, Melinda D and Stevens, Carly J and Sullivan, Lauren and Wolkovich, Elizabeth and Wragg, Peter D and Wright, Justin and Yang, Louie} }