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Plant diversity effects on grassland productivity are robust to both nutrient enrichment and drought
,
Yann Hautier,
Andy Hector,
Anke Jentsch,
Jürgen Kreyling,
Vojtech Lanta,
Michel Loreau,
Sebastian T. Meyer,
Akira S. Mori,
Shahid Naeem,
Cecilia Palmborg,
H. Wayne Polley,
Peter B. Reich,
Bernhard Schmid,
Alrun Siebenkäs,
Eric Seabloom,
Madhav P. Thakur,
David Tilman,
Anja Vogel,
Nico Eisenhauer
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Volume: 371, Issue: 1694, Start page: 20150277
Swansea University Author:
John Griffin
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Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
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DOI (Published version): 10.1098/rstb.2015.0277
Abstract
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 uncle...
| Published in: | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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| ISSN: | 0962-8436 1471-2970 |
| Published: |
2016
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| Online Access: |
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa31870 |
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| Abstract: |
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. |
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| Keywords: |
Biodiversity, ecosystem function, grasslands |
| College: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering |
| Issue: |
1694 |
| Start Page: |
20150277 |