Diversity–interaction modeling: estimating contributions of species identities and interactions to ecosystem function

Kirwan, Laura; Connolly, J.; Finn, John A.; Brophy, Caroline; Lúscher, A.; Nyfeler, D.; Sebastià, Maria‐Teresa

doi:10.1890/08-1684.1

Cited by 184 publications

(277 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…augmented with terms for interactions with harvest year or harvest occasion (Kirwan et al 2007(Kirwan et al , 2009. Sown proportions of P. pratense, L. perenne, T. pratense, C. intybus, Oecologia (2012) 169:793-802 795 and M. sativa were denoted G 1 , G 2 , L, DF, and DL, respectively.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grassland plant species diversity decreases invasion by increasing resource use

Frankow‐Lindberg

2011

Oecologia

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Species richness of plant communities has been demonstrated to provide resistance to invasion by unsown species, though the relationship with resource availability varies between studies. The present work involved five grassland species grown in monocultures and in four-species mixtures sown in accordance with a simplex design. The species used represented different functional groups (i.e. grasses, legumes and non-N(2)-fixing species), each of which differed internally in terms of competitiveness. I hypothesized that sown diversity would negatively affect invader performance by decreasing the availability of light and soil nitrogen (N) for invading species, and that functional composition of the sown diversity would affect the functional composition of the invading flora. The experimental plots were harvested for two years, and were fertilized with 100 kg N ha(-1) each year. The number of unsown species (classified into four functional groups) invading each plot and their proportion of the biomass harvested were recorded. The penetration of incoming light through the canopy, the apparent N uptake by the sown species from the soil, and the mineral N content in the soil were measured. I found that diverse communities captured more resources both above- and belowground, and the number of invading species and their biomass production were smaller in mixed than in monoculture plots. However, the sampling effect of one grass was also strong. These results suggest that increased resource use in diverse communities can reduce invasion.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grassland plant species diversity decreases invasion by increasing resource use

Frankow‐Lindberg

2011

Oecologia

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“…As the number of species in a system increases so does the number of possible interactions, either positive or negative thus affecting assembly [21]–[23]. We know from many biodiversity experiments that niche complementarity between species varying in traits can lead to better overall resource-use at community level, and that particular combinations of functional groups (particularly N 2 -fixers combined with grasses) as well as species- and functional group richness can drive positive diversity effects [17]–[20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priority Effects of Time of Arrival of Plant Functional Groups Override Sowing Interval or Density Effects: A Grassland Experiment

et al. 2014

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Priority effects occur when species that arrive first in a habitat significantly affect the establishment, growth, or reproduction of species arriving later and thus affect functioning of communities. However, we know little about how the timing of arrival of functionally different species may alter structure and function during assembly. Even less is known about how plant density might interact with initial assembly. In a greenhouse experiment legumes, grasses or forbs were sown a number of weeks before the other two plant functional types were sown (PFT) in combination with a sowing density treatment. Legumes, grasses or non-legume forbs were sown first at three different density levels followed by sowing of the remaining PFTs after three or six-weeks. We found that the order of arrival of different plant functional types had a much stronger influence on aboveground productivity than sowing density or interval between the sowing events. The sowing of legumes before the other PFTs produced the highest aboveground biomass. The larger sowing interval led to higher asymmetric competition, with highest dominance of the PFT sown first. It seems that legumes were better able to get a head-start and be productive before the later groups arrived, but that their traits allowed for better subsequent establishment of non-legume PFTs. Our study indicates that the manipulation of the order of arrival can create priority effects which favour functional groups of plants differently and thus induce different assembly routes and affect community composition and functioning.

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“…The traditional explanation for richness-productivity relationships is that larger assemblages of species have a greater probability of including species that have low niche overlap and thus can access different resources (1,21). This complementarity in resource use may be estimated by quantifying the performance of species i in polyculture against the expected performance from its monocultures (22,23). Polycultures also might appear more productive compared with monocultures via a selection effect-if highly productive species dominate the polyculture, displacing lowproductivity species (22).…”

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confidence: 99%

Experimental evidence that evolutionarily diverse assemblages result in higher productivity

Cadotte

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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There now is ample experimental evidence that speciose assemblages are more productive and provide a greater amount of ecosystem services than depauperate ones. However, these experiments often conclude that there is a higher probability of including complementary species combinations in assemblages with more species and lack a priori prediction about which species combinations maximize function. Here, I report the results of an experiment manipulating the evolutionary relatedness of constituent plant species across a richness gradient. I show that assemblages with distantly related species contributed most to the higher biomass production in multispecies assemblages, through species complementarity. Species produced more biomass than predicted from their monocultures when they were in plots with distantly related species and produced the amount of biomass predicted from monoculture when sown with close relatives. This finding suggests that in the absence of any other information, combining distantly related species in restored or managed landscapes may serve to maximize biomass production and carbon sequestration, thus merging calls to conserve evolutionary history and maximize ecosystem function.biodiversity | phylogenetic diversity | transgressive overyielding E vidence showing that ecosystem function is positively related to the number of species in an assemblage (1-7) has profoundly changed how scientists and policy makers view the potential impact of species extinction (8, 9). However, not all species contribute equally to emergent functioning of an assemblage. How much species uniquely contribute to ecosystem functioning depends on several different aspects of species ecologies, including how variable their population dynamics are (10-12) and how susceptible they are to local extinction (13), as well as how much they overlap in their resource requirements (14, 15) and the relative distinctiveness of species in multivariate functional trait space (16,17).Measuring the meaningful differences in species' ecologies, across large numbers of species, has proven difficult. However, the simple assumption that the more time that has passed since two species shared a common ancestor, the higher the probability they have ecologically diverged appears to provide a powerful explanation for how biodiversity affects ecosystem function (15,(18)(19)(20). Previous analyses of the relationship between plant evolutionary history and biomass production used existing experiments that manipulated species richness. These experiments often were biased toward distantly related species, as experimenters chose to include representatives of disparate lineages (e.g., a grass or a nitrogen fixer); thus, the observed relationship between evolutionary history and productivity may have been driven by the relatively few close relatives used in these experiments (19).Further, previous analyses of the relationship between phylogenetic diversity (PD) and ecosystem function relied on the untested assumption that distantly related species are m...

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Diversity–interaction modeling: estimating contributions of species identities and interactions to ecosystem function

Cited by 184 publications

References 17 publications

Grassland plant species diversity decreases invasion by increasing resource use

Grassland plant species diversity decreases invasion by increasing resource use

Priority Effects of Time of Arrival of Plant Functional Groups Override Sowing Interval or Density Effects: A Grassland Experiment

Experimental evidence that evolutionarily diverse assemblages result in higher productivity

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