Climate modifies response of non-native and native species richness to nutrient enrichment

Abstract

One contribution of 17 to a theme issue 'Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in dynamic landscapes'. School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia Ecosystem eutrophication often increases domination by non-natives and causes displacement of native taxa. However, variation in environmental conditions may affect the outcome of interactions between native and non-native taxa in environments where nutrient supply is elevated. We examined the interactive effects of eutrophication, climate variability and climate average conditions on the success of native and non-native plant species using experimental nutrient manipulations replicated at 32 grassland sites on four continents. We hypothesized that effects of nutrient addition would be greatest where climate was stable and benign, owing to reduced niche partitioning. We found that the abundance of non-native species increased with nutrient addition independent of climate; however, nutrient addition increased nonnative species richness and decreased native species richness, with these effects & 2016 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.on May 12, 2018 http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/ Downloaded from dampened in warmer or wetter sites. Eutrophication also altered the time scale in which grassland invasion responded to climate, decreasing the importance of long-term climate and increasing that of annual climate. Thus, climatic conditions mediate the responses of native and non-native flora to nutrient enrichment. Our results suggest that the negative effect of nutrient addition on native abundance is decoupled from its effect on richness, and reduces the time scale of the links between climate and compositional change.

Responses of common and rare aliens and natives to nutrient availability and fluctuations

“…; Flores‐Moreno et al . ). Not only increases in the mean levels of resource availability, but also increases in the variability of resource availability are thus likely to increase plant invasion.…”

Nutrient availability and invasive fish jointly drive community dynamics in an experimental aquatic system

“…Despite the common co‐occurrence of nonnative species and elevated nutrient loading, predicting how these two factors interact to drive ecosystem change remains a key challenge (Flores‐Moreno et al. , Tabassum and Leishman , Teixeira et al. ).…”

“…Despite the common co-occurrence of nonnative species and elevated nutrient loading, predicting how these two factors interact to drive ecosystem change remains a key challenge (Flores-Moreno et al 2016, Tabassum and Leishman 2016, Teixeira et al 2017. The net effect of nutrient availability on species invasions will depend on characteristics of the invasive species (e.g., resource needs, resource use efficiency, trophic position) and the invaded ecosystem (e.g., relative roles of top-down versus bottom-up factors in regulating community dynamics; Kolar andLodge 2000, Gonz alez et al 2010).…”

Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in dynamic landscapes

“…Another meta-study of this special issue, an experiment replicated at 32 grassland sites on four continents, addresses how eutrophication and climate affect the invasibility of plant communities by non-native species [64]. Interestingly, this study shows that (i) invasibility is fostered by eutrophication and (ii) this effect is dampened as temperature and precipitation increases [64]. The emergent result from these two studies is that the effects of varying environmental conditions on BEF relationships are (i) non-trivial and (ii) depend on the ecosystem function that is studied.…”