Plant Removals in Perennial Grassland: Vegetation Dynamics, Decomposers, Soil Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Properties

Wardle, David A.; Bonner, Karen I.; Barker, G. M.; Yeates, G. W.; Nicholson, K. S.; Bardgett, Richard D.; Watson, R.N.; Ghani, A.

doi:10.2307/2657230

Cited by 178 publications

(283 citation statements)

References 87 publications

(115 reference statements)

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“…This strongly suggests that effects of species presence were by far more important than potential effects due to the increased number of interactions between species in the more diverse communities. Our observation is in accordance with Hooper and Vitousek's (1997) grassland diversity experiment and the study by Wardle et al (1999) from which the authors concluded that presence of specific plant functional types was a more important determinant of community productivity than was the number of functional types per se. The data from other studies of effects of grassland diversity on ecosystem function also are in line with this conclusion.…”

Section: Effects Of Species Diversitysupporting

confidence: 92%

A Long-Term Field Study on Biodiversity X Elevated CO 2 Interactions in Grassland

Niklaus¹,

Leadley²,

Schmid³

et al. 2001

Ecological Monographs

122

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Interactive effects of increases in atmospheric CO 2 and reductions in plant species diversity were investigated in planted calcareous grassland communities in northwestern Switzerland. The experimental communities were composed of 5, 12, and 31 species assembled from the native species pool. The study aimed at testing whether the CO 2 responses of ecosystems change when specific sets of species are lost from plant communities. Species were selected so that the proportion of grasses, legumes, and non-legume forb individuals remained constant across levels of diversity. The most diverse plant community had approximately the same diversity as the surrounding grassland, and species occurring in less diverse communities were subsets of the species in the more diverse communities. The factorial atmospheric-CO 2 treatment was applied using 50-cm-tall, open-bottom, opentop wind screens. Plant community-level responses and the responses of the individual species were assessed over a period of five years. A significant positive correlation between plant community diversity and biomass was detected, but this effect was not present on all dates. Significant effects of elevated CO 2 on community biomass were only found in the first years of treatment. CO 2 effects were largest in the communities with the highest number of plant species and were primarily due to the presence of responsive species not present in the less diverse communities. The time dependency of community responses to elevated CO 2 and species diversity was related to shifts in community structure of the experimental plots. Community responses at the beginning of the experiment were dominated by the response of species with a less competitive/stress-tolerant life history. These species were successively lost from experimental plots as the experiment proceeded, and the observed community-level effects became smaller. Changes in species composition over the experimental duration were affected by elevated CO 2 in the way that species loss was reduced (i.e., coexistence of species performing well at the beginning and at the end of the fiveyear period increased) and the way that community evenness was increased (i.e., dominance was reduced). Based on these results our main conclusions are that (1) community-level responses to CO 2 enrichment depend on the species present; (2) the positive correlation between productivity and species numbers was caused by different species at the beginning and at the end of the experiment; (3) therefore, a large, redundant species pool is important in assuring high productivity under altering environmental conditions; (4) elevated CO 2 has the potential to substantially alter the structure of grassland communities, even if community productivity does not increase; and (5) a short-term effect of elevated CO 2 may be misleading when attempting to predict longer-term effects.

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Section: Effects Of Species Diversitysupporting

confidence: 92%

A Long-Term Field Study on Biodiversity X Elevated CO 2 Interactions in Grassland

Niklaus¹,

Leadley²,

Schmid³

et al. 2001

Ecological Monographs

122

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“…All ecosystems have a structure that is defined by the pools and fluxes of energy and matter in the system (Hannon 1973). The addition or removal of any one species or resource from a system can impact the strength of other interactions, especially when that species is a large component of net primary productivity (Wardle and Bonner 1999). Therefore, to better understand the impact of invasive species on an ecosystem, the interactions among EIMs are just as important as their individual changes in magnitude and direction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

System‐level changes following invasion caused by disruption of functional relationships among plant and soil properties

Tekiela

Barney

2015

Ecosphere

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The ecological impacts of invasive plants have served to justify the cost of their management, which is estimated to exceed $1 billion annually in the US alone. However, our understanding of the ecological impacts of most invasive plants is extremely limited, and when known, interpretation is confounded with varied measurements and methods. While this can provide important information about specific components of ecosystem function, it limits our understanding of the broader scope of impacts any one species may have. Using Japanese stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum) as a study system, our objectives were to (1) survey a broad suite of 29 important ecological impact metrics (EIMs), (2) identify invader cover‐EIM relationships, and (3) test if the comparative reference (uninvaded or invader removal) influences interpretation. Japanese stiltgrass had the strongest effect on the plant community, followed by soil properties, soil nutrients, and other abiotic/biotic factors. Many EIM values differed among reference types, and plant community EIMs were reduced with increasing Japanese stiltgrass abundance. For example, plant biodiversity was lower in the invasion when compared to both removed and uninvaded sites; however, soil organic matter was higher only in the uninvaded site when compared to the invasion. The integrative ecosystem metric E(c) also showed that the system overall was impacted by the Japanese stiltgrass invasion, and this varied among sites. Interestingly, relationships among EIMs were also changed by the presence of Japanese stiltgrass. For example, a strong correlation between pH and soil organic matter disappeared when Japanese stiltgrass was present. Together this suggests that this invaded ecosystem functions in a different way through both individual and correlated alterations to ecosystem properties.

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“…Plant community biomass as well as plant community composition and diversity all have been identified as potential drivers of belowground community composition (Bardgett and Wardle 2010). The relative importance of these different factors for belowground community composition may depend on the functions of the soil biota considered (e.g., Wardle et al 1999, De Deyn et al 2011. Effects of plant community composition on soil biota may depend on their trophic position (Scherber et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, there are some phyla of soil biota, such as nematodes, which include a wide variety of feeding types and trophic groups that can be studied in a quantitatively reliable way (Bongers 1990, Yeates et al 1993, Kardol et al 2010. It has been shown that plant functional groups can promote specific nematode feeding groups (Wardle et al 1999, Viketoft et al 2009, Sohlenius et al 2011, presumably because of differences in resource quality (Orwin et al 2010). However, also plant species within the same plant functional group can host quite different nematode communities (De Deyn et al 2004, Viketoft et al 2005, Sohlenius et al 2011 and plant diversities may affect nematodes in a species-specific way (Kostenko et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Possible mechanisms underlying abundance and diversity responses of nematode communities to plant diversity

et al. 2017

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Abstract. Plant diversity is known to influence the abundance and diversity of belowground biota; however, patterns are not well predictable and there is still much unknown about the driving mechanisms. We analyzed changes in soil nematode community composition as affected by long-term manipulations of plant species and functional group diversity in a field experiment with plant species diversity controlled by sowing a range of 1-60 species mixtures and controlling non-sown species by hand weeding. Nematode communities contain a variety of species feeding on bacteria, fungi, plants, invertebrates, while some are omnivorous. We analyzed responses of nematode abundance and diversity to plant species and functional diversity, and used structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the possible mechanisms underlying the observed patterns. The abundance of individuals of all nematode feeding types, except for predatory nematodes, increased with both plant species and plant functional group diversity. The abundance of microbial-feeding nematodes was related positively to aboveground plant community biomass, whereas abundance of plant-feeding nematodes was related positively to shoot C:N ratio. The abundance of predatory nematodes, in turn, was positively related to numbers of plant-feeding nematodes, but not to the abundance of microbial feeders. Interestingly, the numbers of plant-feeding nematodes per unit root mass were lowest in the high-diversity plant communities, pointing at reduced exposure to belowground herbivores when plants grow in species-diverse communities. Taxon richness of plant-feeding and microbialfeeding nematodes increased with plant species and plant functional group diversity. Increasing plant functional group diversity also enhanced taxon richness of predatory nematodes. The SEM suggests that bottom-up control effects of plant species and plant functional group diversity on abundance of nematodes in the various feeding types predominantly involve mechanistic linkages related to plant quality instead of plant quantity; especially, C:N ratios of the shoot tissues, and/or effects of plants on the soil habitat, rather than shoot quantity explained nematode abundance. Although aboveground plant properties may only partly serve as a proxy for belowground resource quality and quantity, our results encourage further studies on nematode responses to variations in plant species and plant functional diversity in relation to both quantity and quality of the belowground resources.

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Plant Removals in Perennial Grassland: Vegetation Dynamics, Decomposers, Soil Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Properties

Cited by 178 publications

References 87 publications

A Long-Term Field Study on Biodiversity X Elevated CO 2 Interactions in Grassland

A Long-Term Field Study on Biodiversity X Elevated CO 2 Interactions in Grassland

System‐level changes following invasion caused by disruption of functional relationships among plant and soil properties

Possible mechanisms underlying abundance and diversity responses of nematode communities to plant diversity

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