scholarly journals Priority effects, consumer pressure, and soil resources independently alter plant diversity and resource strategies during a multi-year successional field experiment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Wilfahrt ◽  
Fletcher W. Halliday ◽  
Robert W. Heckman
Keyword(s):  
Plant Community ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Seed Mass ◽  
Taxonomic Diversity ◽  
Community Diversity ◽  
Priority Effects ◽  
List Type ◽  
Resident Species ◽  
Soil Resource ◽  
Plant Community Succession

SummaryPlant community succession is structured by priority effects, plant consumer pressure, and soil resource supply. Importantly, these drivers may interact, their effects may vary temporally, and they may influence different facets of plant community diversity by promoting different plant tradeoff strategies.In an herbaceous successional system, we manipulated priority effects by altering initial plant richness, consumer pressure via pesticide spraying, and soil resource supply via fertilization. We examined how these processes jointly influenced succession, including taxonomic diversity and functional traits, over four years.Diversity decreased in different years in response to more diverse priority effects, lower consumer pressure, and increased soil resource supply. Functionally, higher soil resource supply increased community height, SLA, and seed mass; higher consumer pressure decreased intraspecific community height, and increased interspecific SLA; priority effects led to decreased seed mass only when plots were unplanted.Our results suggest species’ resource strategies underlie plant diversity responses. Resource addition promoted resource-acquisitive species, consumer pressure disadvantaged resource-conservative species, and diversity of priority effects altered subsequent community composition through persistence of early residents, not via traits. We show that community responses to drivers of succession depend on underlying trait tradeoffs of resident species, and these tradeoffs influence community diversity across succession.

scholarly journals Climate and plant community diversity in space and time

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (9) ◽  
pp. 4464-4470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Harrison ◽  
Marko J. Spasojevic ◽  
Daijiang Li
Keyword(s):  
Plant Community ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Community Diversity ◽  
Niche Conservatism ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Drying Trend ◽  
Functional And Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Over Time

Climate strongly shapes plant diversity over large spatial scales, with relatively warm and wet (benign, productive) regions supporting greater numbers of species. Unresolved aspects of this relationship include what causes it, whether it permeates to community diversity at smaller spatial scales, whether it is accompanied by patterns in functional and phylogenetic diversity as some hypotheses predict, and whether it is paralleled by climate-driven changes in diversity over time. Here, studies of Californian plants are reviewed and new analyses are conducted to synthesize climate–diversity relationships in space and time. Across spatial scales and organizational levels, plant diversity is maximized in more productive (wetter) climates, and these consistent spatial relationships are mirrored in losses of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity over time during a recent climatic drying trend. These results support the tolerance and climatic niche conservatism hypotheses for climate–diversity relationships, and suggest there is some predictability to future changes in diversity in water-limited climates.

scholarly journals Belowground Bud Bank Distribution and Aboveground Community Characteristics along Different Moisture Gradients of Alpine Meadow in the Zoige Plateau, China

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2602
Author(s):  
Xinjing Ding ◽  
Peixi Su ◽  
Zijuan Zhou ◽  
Rui Shi
Keyword(s):  
Plant Community ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Alpine Meadow ◽  
Bud Bank ◽  
Alpine Meadows ◽  
Water Gradient ◽  
Positive Correlations ◽  
Zoigê Plateau ◽  
Plant Community Succession ◽  
Zoige Plateau

The belowground bud bank plays an important role in plant communities succession and maintenance. In order to understand the response of the bud bank to the sod layer moisture, we investigated the bud bank distribution, size, and composition of six different water gradient alpine meadows through excavating in the Zoige Plateau. The results showed: (1) The alpine meadow plant belowground buds were mainly distributed in the 0–10 cm sod layer, accounting for 74.2%–100% of the total. The total bud density of the swamp wetland and degraded meadow was the highest (16567.9 bud/m3) and the lowest (4839.5 bud/m3). (2) A decrease of the moisture plant diversity showed a trend of increasing first and then decreasing. Among six alpine meadows the swamp meadow plant diversity was the highest, and species richness, Simpson, Shannon–Wiener, and Pielou were 10.333, 0.871, 0.944, and 0.931, respectively. (3) The moisture was significantly positively correlated with the total belowground buds and short rhizome bud density. There were significant positive correlations with sod layer moisture and tiller bulb bud density. This study indicates that the moisture affected bud bank distribution and composition in the plant community, and the results provide important information for predicting plant community succession in the alpine meadow with future changes in precipitation patterns.

scholarly journals Plant Diversity and Nitrogen Addition on Belowground Biodiversity and Soil Organic Carbon Storage in Biofuel Cropping Systems

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Butt
Keyword(s):  
Plant Community ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Cropping Systems ◽  
C Sequestration ◽  
Community Diversity ◽  
Big Bluestem ◽  
Soil Biodiversity ◽  
Soil C ◽  
C Storage ◽  
Bioenergy Cropping Systems

Bioenergy production may reduce the emission of CO2 which contributes to climate change, particularly when management strategies are adopted that promote soil carbon (C) sequestration in bioenergy cropping systems. Planting perennial native grasses, such as switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) and big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii Vitman) may be used as a strategy to enhance soil C accumulation owing to their extensive root systems. Fertilizer use may further promote soil C sequestration, because of its positive impacts on plant production and soil C input. However, the influence of fertilizer addition on soil C accumulation is variable across bioenergy cropping systems, and fertilizer can negatively impact the environment. Increasing plant diversity may be used as a strategy to enhance soil C accumulation while augmenting other ecosystem properties such as soil biodiversity. The present study evaluates how inter- and intra- specific plant community diversity and N addition influence soil C storage and soil biodiversity. Soil was collected from a long-term (9 growing seasons) field experiment located at the Fermilab National Environmental Research Park in Illinois, USA. Treatments included [1] three cultivars of big bluestem and three cultivars of switchgrass cultivars grown in monoculture, [2] plant community diversity manipulated at both the species- and cultivar level, and [3] nitrogen (N) applied annually at two levels (0 and 67 kg ha-1). The soil at the site was dominated by C3 grasses for 30 years before replacement with C4 bioenergy grasses, which enabled quantification of plant-derived C accumulation owing to the natural difference in isotopic signature between C3 and C4 grasses. Soil samples were analyzed for [1] soil C and its δ13C isotopic signature, and [2] nematode and soil bacterial diversity. Our results indicate that both plant diversity and N addition influence soil community structure but not soil C storage or soil nematode biodiversity. However, the addition of big bluestem to the plant species mixes enhanced plant-derived C storage. In summary, our findings suggest that plant species identity can control soil C accumulation in the years following land conversion, and that manipulating plant community structure in bioenergy cropping systems may have a greater positive impact on soil C accumulation than N fertilization.

scholarly journals Effects of temperature and plant diversity on orthopterans and leafhoppers in calcareous dry grasslands

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Costanza Geppert ◽  
Greta La Bella ◽  
Francesco Boscutti ◽  
Francesco Sanna ◽  
Federico Marangoni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Community Composition ◽  
Plant Community ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Community Diversity ◽  
Feeding Guilds ◽  
Vegetation Changes ◽  
Host Feeding ◽  
European Alps ◽  
Natural Grasslands

Abstract In mountains, current land-use changes are altering plant communities of semi-natural grasslands with potential cascading effects on associated herbivores. Besides vegetation changes, temperature is also a key driver of insect diversity, and in the European Alps is predicted to increase by 0.25 °C per decade. Understanding herbivore responses to temperature and plant composition changes in mountain environments is of increasing importance. Our study aims at investigating the response to temperature and plant diversity and composition of two key herbivore groups (orthopterans and leafhoppers) belonging to contrasting feeding guilds (chewers vs. sap-feeders). We hypothesized that orthopteran diversity would be driven by temperature while leafhoppers by plant community composition. We selected 15 dry calcareous grasslands ranging from 100 to 1330 m a.s.l. along two independent gradients of plant diversity and temperature. We sampled orthopteran and leafhopper species richness and abundance by sweep-netting. Consistent with their low feeding specialisation, orthopteran species richness and community composition were only driven by temperature. By contrast, leafhopper species richness was not affected by temperature nor by plant diversity but leafhopper community composition was strongly influenced by plant species composition. This response can be explained by the higher host feeding specialisation of many leafhopper species. Species rarity and mobility did not change the response of the diversity of both groups, but orthopteran abundance increased with temperature only for highly mobile species. Altogether, our results suggest that future responses of grassland herbivores to vegetation changes and temperature warming are highly variable and depend on the feeding strategy and specialisation of the focal herbivore group. Implications for insect conservation Leafhoppers emerged to be particularly sensitive to potential management or climate-induced change in vegetation composition, while orthopterans are expected to respond directly to temperature warming due to their relaxed association with plant community diversity and composition.

scholarly journals Metabarcoding reveals different zooplankton communities in northern and southern areas of the North Sea

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Niklas Macher ◽  
Berry B. van der Hoorn ◽  
Katja T. C. A. Peijnenburg ◽  
Lodewijk van Walraven ◽  
Willem Renema
Keyword(s):  
North Sea ◽  
Zooplankton Community ◽  
Taxonomic Diversity ◽  
Molecular Techniques ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
List Type ◽  
The North ◽  
Shelf Sea ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Zooplankton Communities

AbstractZooplankton are key players in marine ecosystems, linking primary production to higher trophic levels. The high abundance and high taxonomic diversity renders zooplankton ideal for biodiversity monitoring. However, taxonomic identification of the zooplankton assemblage is challenging due to its high diversity, subtle morphological differences and the presence of many meroplanktonic species, especially in coastal seas. Molecular techniques such as metabarcoding can help with rapid processing and identification of taxa in complex samples, and are therefore promising tools for identifying zooplankton communities. In this study, we applied metabarcoding of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I gene to zooplankton samples collected along a latitudinal transect in the North Sea, a shelf sea of the Atlantic Ocean. Northern regions of the North Sea are influenced by inflow of oceanic Atlantic waters, whereas the southern parts are characterised by more coastal waters. Our metabarcoding results indicated strong differences in zooplankton community composition between northern and southern areas of the North Sea, particularly in the classes Copepoda, Actinopterygii (ray-finned fishes) and Polychaeta. We compared these results to the known distributions of species reported in previous studies, and by comparing the abundance of copepods to data obtained from the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR). We found that our metabarcoding results are mostly congruent with the reported distribution and abundance patterns of zooplankton species in the North Sea. Our results highlight the power of metabarcoding to rapidly assess complex zooplankton samples, and we suggest that the technique could be used in future monitoring campaigns and biodiversity assessments.HighlightsZooplankton communities are different in northern and southern areas of the North SeaMetabarcoding results are consistent with known species distributions and abundanceMetabarcoding allows for fast identification of meroplanktonic species

scholarly journals Are we missing the forest for the trees? Conspecific negative density dependence in a temperate deciduous forest

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn E. Barry ◽  
Stefan A. Schnitzer
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Density Dependence ◽  
Plant Community ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Temperate Forest ◽  
Woody Plant ◽  
Community Level ◽  
Life History Strategies ◽  
Canopy Trees ◽  
Negative Density Dependence

AbstractOne of the central goals of ecology is to determine the mechanisms that enable coexistence among species. Evidence is accruing that conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD), the process by which plant seedlings are unable to survive in the area surrounding adults of their same species, is a major contributor to tree species coexistence. However, for CNDD to maintain diversity, three conditions must be met. First, CNDD must maintain diversity for the majority of the woody plant community (rather than merely specific groups). Second, the pattern of repelled recruitment must increase in with plant size. Third, CNDD must occurs across life history strategies and not be restricted to a single life history strategy. These three conditions are rarely tested simultaneously. In this study, we simultaneously test all three conditions in a woody plant community in a North American temperate forest. We examined whether the different woody plant growth forms (shrubs, understory trees, mid-story trees, canopy trees, and lianas) at different ontogenetic stages (seedling, sapling, and adult) were overdispersed – a spatial pattern indicative of CNDD – using spatial point pattern analysis across life history stages and strategies. We found that there was a strong signal of overdispersal at the community level. However, this pattern was driven by adult canopy trees. By contrast, understory plants, which can constitute up to 80% of temperate forest plant diversity, were not overdispersed as adults. The lack of overdispersal suggests that CNDD is unlikely to be a major mechanism maintaining understory plant diversity. The focus on trees for the vast majority of CNDD studies may have biased the perception of the prevalence of CNDD as a dominant mechanism that maintains community-level diversity when, according to our data, CNDD may be restricted largely to trees.

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