scholarly journals Food webs obscure the strength of plant diversity effects on primary productivity

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric W. Seabloom ◽  
Linda Kinkel ◽  
Elizabeth T. Borer ◽  
Yann Hautier ◽  
Rebecca A. Montgomery ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Webs ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Primary Productivity ◽  
Diversity Effects

scholarly journals Diversity‐dependent plant–soil feedbacks underlie long‐term plant diversity effects on primary productivity

Ecosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. e02704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaly R. Guerrero‐Ramírez ◽  
Peter B. Reich ◽  
Cameron Wagg ◽  
Marcel Ciobanu ◽  
Nico Eisenhauer
Keyword(s):  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Primary Productivity ◽  
Plant Soil ◽  
Diversity Effects

scholarly journals Plant diversity effects on soil food webs are stronger than those of elevated CO2 and N deposition in a long-term grassland experiment

2013 ◽  
Vol 110 (17) ◽  
pp. 6889-6894 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Eisenhauer ◽  
T. Dobies ◽  
S. Cesarz ◽  
S. E. Hobbie ◽  
R. J. Meyer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Webs ◽  
Elevated Co2 ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
N Deposition ◽  
Soil Food Webs ◽  
Diversity Effects

scholarly journals Plant diversity alters the representation of motifs in food webs

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren P. Giling ◽  
Anne Ebeling ◽  
Nico Eisenhauer ◽  
Sebastian T. Meyer ◽  
Christiane Roscher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Webs ◽  
Plant Diversity

scholarly journals Biodiversity enhances the multitrophic control of arthropod herbivory

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (45) ◽  
pp. eabb6603
Author(s):  
A. D. Barnes ◽  
C. Scherber ◽  
U. Brose ◽  
E. T. Borer ◽  
A. Ebeling ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Webs ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Economic Costs ◽  
Natural Control ◽  
Environmentally Sustainable ◽  
Herbivore Interactions ◽  
Plant Herbivore ◽  
Simultaneous Influence ◽  
Grassland Biodiversity ◽  
High Diversity

Arthropod herbivores cause substantial economic costs that drive an increasing need to develop environmentally sustainable approaches to herbivore control. Increasing plant diversity is expected to limit herbivory by altering plant-herbivore and predator-herbivore interactions, but the simultaneous influence of these interactions on herbivore impacts remains unexplored. We compiled 487 arthropod food webs in two long-running grassland biodiversity experiments in Europe and North America to investigate whether and how increasing plant diversity can reduce the impacts of herbivores on plants. We show that plants lose just under half as much energy to arthropod herbivores when in high-diversity mixtures versus monocultures and reveal that plant diversity decreases effects of herbivores on plants by simultaneously benefiting predators and reducing average herbivore food quality. These findings demonstrate that conserving plant diversity is crucial for maintaining interactions in food webs that provide natural control of herbivore pests.

scholarly journals Resource enrichment combined with biomass removal maintains plant diversity and community stability in a long-term grazed grassland

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 611-620
Author(s):  
Feng-Wei Xu ◽  
Jian-Jun Li ◽  
Li-Ji Wu ◽  
Xiao-Ming Lu ◽  
Wen Xing ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Species Diversity ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Primary Productivity ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Light Exposure ◽  
Community Stability ◽  
Water Addition ◽  
Biomass Removal

Abstract Aims Long-term heavy grazing reduces plant diversity and ecosystem function by intensifying nitrogen (N) and water limitation. In contrast, the absence of biomass removal can cause species loss by elevating light competition and weakening community stability, which is exacerbated by N and water enrichment. Hence, how to maintain species diversity and community stability is still a huge challenge for sustainable management of worldwide grasslands. Methods We conducted a 4-year manipulated experiment in six long-term grazing blocks to explore combination of resource additions and biomass removal (increased water, N and light availability) on species richness and community stability in semiarid grasslands of Inner Mongolia, China. Important Findings In all blocks treated with the combination of resource additions and biomass removal, primary productivity increased and species richness and community stability were maintained over 4 years of experiment. At both species and plant functional group (PFG) levels, the aboveground biomass of treated plants remained temporally stable in treatments with the combination of N and/or water addition and biomass removal. The maintenance of species richness was primarily caused by the biomass removal, which could increase the amount of light exposure for grasses under resource enrichment. Both species asynchrony and stability of PFGs contributed to the high temporal stability observed in these communities. Our results indicate that management practices of combined resource enrichment with biomass removal, such as grazing or mowing, could not only enhance primary productivity but also maintain plant species diversity, species asynchrony and community stability. Furthermore, as overgrazing-induced degradation and resource enrichment-induced biodiversity loss continue to be major problems worldwide, our findings have important implications for adaptive management in semiarid grasslands and beyond.

scholarly journals Effects of temperature on carbon circulation in macroalgal food webs are mediated by herbivores

2019 ◽  
Vol 166 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maysa Ito ◽  
Marco Scotti ◽  
Markus Franz ◽  
Francisco R. Barboza ◽  
Björn Buchholz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Temperature Gradient ◽  
Food Web ◽  
Food Webs ◽  
Carbon Storage ◽  
Primary Productivity ◽  
Idotea Balthica ◽  
Metabolic Performance ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Organic Carbon Storage ◽  
Temperature Impacts

Abstract Warming is one of the most dramatic aspects of climate change and threatens future ecosystem functioning. It may alter primary productivity and thus jeopardize carbon sequestration, a crucial ecosystem service provided by coastal environments. Fucus vesiculosus is an important canopy-forming macroalga in the Baltic Sea, and its main consumer is Idotea balthica. The objective of this study is to understand how temperature impacts a simplified food web composed of macroalgae and herbivores to quantify the effect on organic carbon storage. The organisms were exposed to a temperature gradient from 5 to 25 °C. We measured and modeled primary production, respiration, growth and epiphytic load on the surface of Fucus and respiration, growth and egestion of Idotea. The results show that temperature affects physiological responses of Fucus and Idotea separately. However, Idotea proved more sensitive to increasing temperatures than the primary producers. The lag between the collapse of the grazer and the decline of Fucus and epiphytes above 20 °C allows an increase of carbon storage of the primary productivity at higher temperatures. Therefore, along the temperature gradient, the simplified food web stores carbon in a non-monotonic way (reaching minimum at 20 °C). Our work stresses the need of considering the combined metabolic performance of all organisms for sound predictions on carbon circulation in food webs.

Complex life under the McMurdo Ice Shelf, and some speculations on food webs

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy Kim
Keyword(s):  
Food Webs ◽  
Primary Productivity ◽  
Benthic Community ◽  
Open Water ◽  
Fine Sediment ◽  
Soft Corals ◽  
Ice Shelf ◽  
Ice Shelves ◽  
Technological Limitations ◽  
Hard Substrates

AbstractHabitats under ice shelves are minimally explored, primarily because of technological limitations. These areas are separated from photosynthetic primary productivity by thick ice and distance to open water. Nevertheless, a diverse macrofaunal benthic community was discovered at 188 m depth, 80 km back from the edge of the McMurdo Ice Shelf. The general habitat was fine sediment with occasional dropstones, and dominant taxa were polychaetes and brittle stars, with alcyonacean soft corals and anemones on hard substrates. Gelatinous animals were abundant near the seafloor, and possibly part of a food web that supports the benthic community.

Plant diversity effects on the water balance of an experimental grassland

Ecohydrology ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. n/a-n/a ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Leimer ◽  
Yvonne Kreutziger ◽  
Stephan Rosenkranz ◽  
Holger Beßler ◽  
Christof Engels ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Balance ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Diversity Effects
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