Selection on convergent functional traits drives compositional divergence in early succession of a tallgrass prairie restoration experiment

Karimi, Nisa; Larkin, Daniel J.; Glasenhardt, Mary‐Claire; Barak, Rebecca S.; Williams, Evelyn W.; Ernst, Adrienne R.; Hipp, Andrew L.

doi:10.1111/1365-2745.13808

Cited by 6 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 119 publications

(147 reference statements)

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“…Both PD and MNTD are strong measures of habitat filtering, which are relevant to our study on changes in metrics over time, and with communities planted as seeds and as plugs (Miller et al 2017). In preliminary analyses, MPD (another commonly used phylogenetic metric in community ecological studies) did not covary with PD in our experiment whereas PD and MNTD did correlate strongly and significantly (Hipp et al 2018; Karimi et al 2021). We do not report results from MPD in the main text, but they can be found in Figure S1.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 56%

“…If, as some studies have shown, PD and FD are important predictors of ecosystem function, then sites that maintain higher levels of these forms of diversity may preserve ecosystem function even in the face of decreased species richness (Zirbel et al 2017; Barber et al 2019). Furthermore, restored communities with higher initial FD and PD may also be more “adaptable” to specific restoration conditions, or to future changes (Karimi et al 2021). Our work supports planting high diversity mixes to obtain high diversity plant communities, if diversity is a desired restoration outcome.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…FDis represents the average distance of an object (plots or species) in multivariate (principal coordinates analysis) space to the centroid of all objects (Anderson 2006; Laliberte & Legendre 2010). FD was assessed using 12 continuous leaf traits, 7 categorical life‐history traits, 8 binary root traits, seed mass, a categorical habitat moisture trait, and genome size (trait data amassed as in Karimi et al 2021; Table 1). There was a weak but significant correlation between PD and FD across all simulated plots ( r = 0.058, p < 0.0001; Hipp et al 2018).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phylogenetically and functionally diverse species mixes beget diverse experimental prairies, whether from seeds or plugs

Barak

Karimi

Glasenhardt

et al. 2022

Restoration Ecology

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Phylogenetic and functional diversity are relevant for restoration planning, as they influence important ecosystem functions and services. However, it is unknown whether initial phylogenetic and functional diversity of restorations as planned and planted are maintained over time, that is, the extent to which diversity of the restoration planting is reflected in the diversity of the resulting plant community. Furthermore, in the tallgrass prairie, many restorations are planted from seed. Among-species variation in emergence and establishment affects the transition from seed mixes to realized plant communities in these restorations. We evaluated emergence and early establishment of experimental communities in a biodiversity plot experiment designed to test how phylogenetic and functional diversity influence restoration outcomes. We planted the same experimental communities starting from both seeds and plugs to assess differences in establishment. Our results suggest that phylogenetically and functionally diverse species mixes tend to produce phylogenetically and functionally diverse restored plant communities. After 3 years, experimental communities generally maintained their phylogenetic and functional diversity from seed and plug mixes to established vegetation, despite declines in species richness. While plots planted from seeds had on average 1.3 fewer species than plots planted from plugs, phylogenetic and functional diversity did not significantly differ between the two. Furthermore, most species exhibited no significant differences in percent cover when planted from seeds or plugs. Seeds are generally more cost-effective for restoration than plugs, and our results indicate these two establishment methods achieved similar biodiversity outcomes.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 56%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phylogenetically and functionally diverse species mixes beget diverse experimental prairies, whether from seeds or plugs

Barak

Karimi

Glasenhardt

et al. 2022

Restoration Ecology

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Evidence indicates current restoration practices result in lower phylogenetic diversity than untilled, native remnants, and are not functionally equivalent (Barak et al, 2017). Including phylogenetic diversity in management and restoration practices could promote system resiliency and lead to higher success rates of restoration and management (Barber et al, 2019;Hipp et al, 2015;Karimi et al, 2021), an especially important consideration in the face of an ongoing extinction event and changing climate. A sampling at one time of the growing season has the potential to influence observed phylogenetic diversity by under-sampling taxonomic diversity (Jantzen et al, 2019;Park et al, 2018) due to temporal phenological niche separation and phenological conservatism (i.e., flowering time) (Kochmer & Handel, 1986;Wright & Calderon, 1995).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community‐level phylogenetic diversity does not differ between rare and common lineages across tallgrass prairies in the northern Great Plains

Herzog

Latvis

2022

Ecology and Evolution

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Niche differentiation has served as one explanation for species coexistence, and phylogenetic relatedness provides a means to approximate how ecologically similar species are to each other. To explore the contribution of rare species to community phylogenetic diversity, we sampled 21 plant communities across the Prairie Coteau ecoregion, an area of high conservation concern. We used breakpoint analysis through the iterative addition of less abundant species to the phylogenetic tree for each community to assess the contribution of rare species to community phylogenetic diversity. We also quantify the phylogenetic signal of abundance using Blomberg's K statistic and calculated the phylogenetic similarity between rare and common species using a phylogenetic beta‐diversity metric ( D nn ). To estimate the phylogenetic structuring of these prairie communities, we calculated two common metrics that capture evolutionary relatedness at different scales (MPD and MNTD). Additionally, we examine the correlation between Faith's PD, MPD, and MNTD and species richness. We found rare species do not generally contribute higher levels of phylogenetic diversity than common species. Eight communities had significant breakpoints, with only four communities having an increasing trend for the rarest species. The phylogenetic signal for abundance was low but significant in only four communities, and communities had lower phylogenetic diversity than expected from the regional species pool. Finally, the strength of the correlation between species richness and phylogenetic diversity was mixed. Our results indicate niche differentiation does not explain the persistence of rare species in tallgrass prairies, as they were more closely related than expected from random, suggesting high functional redundancy between rare and common species. This is promising for the long‐term resilience of this ecosystem, but only insofar as enough species remain in the system. With ongoing biodiversity loss, it is essential that we understand the role rare species play in their communities.

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Evolutionary history shapes grassland productivity through opposing effects on complementarity and selection

Larkin,

Glasenhardt,

Williams

et al. 2023

Ecology

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Phylogenetic diversity (PD), the evolutionary history of the organisms comprising a community, is increasingly recognized as an important driver of ecosystem function. However, biodiversity-ecosystem function experiments have rarely included PD as an a priori treatment. Thus, PD's effects in existing experiments are often confounded by covarying differences in species richness and functional trait diversity (FD). Here we report an experimental demonstration of strong PD effects on grassland primary productivity that are independent of FD, which was separately manipulated, and species richness, which was planted uniformly high to mimic diverse natural grasslands. Partitioning diversity effects demonstrated that higher PD increased complementarity (niche partitioning and/or facilitation) but lowered selection effects (probability of sampling highly productive species). Specifically, for every 5% increase in PD, complementarity increased by 26% on average (±8% SE), while selection effects decreased more modestly (8 ± 16%). PD also shaped productivity through clade-level effects on functional traits, that is, trait values associated with particular plant families. This clade effect was most pronounced in the Asteraceae (sunflower family), which, in tallgrass prairies, generally comprises tall, high-biomass species with low phylogenetic distinctiveness. FD also reduced selection effects but did not alter complementarity. Our results show that PD, independent of richness and FD, mediates ecosystem function through contrasting effects on complementarity and selection. This adds to growing evidence that consideration of phylogenetic dimensions of biodiversity can advance ecological understanding and inform conservation and restoration.

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Selection on convergent functional traits drives compositional divergence in early succession of a tallgrass prairie restoration experiment

Abstract: 1. Plant biodiversity is often partitioned into taxonomic diversity (species composition and abundance), phylogenetic diversity (breadth of evolutionary lineages)

Cited by 6 publications

References 119 publications

Phylogenetically and functionally diverse species mixes beget diverse experimental prairies, whether from seeds or plugs

Phylogenetically and functionally diverse species mixes beget diverse experimental prairies, whether from seeds or plugs

Community‐level phylogenetic diversity does not differ between rare and common lineages across tallgrass prairies in the northern Great Plains

Evolutionary history shapes grassland productivity through opposing effects on complementarity and selection

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