Featured
-
-
Article
| Open AccessA global meta-analysis on the effects of organic and inorganic fertilization on grasslands and croplands
Inorganic fertilization reduces plant biodiversity. Here, the authors conduct a global meta-analysis on the use of organic and inorganic fertilizer in croplands and grasslands, showing that while both fertilizers increase plant biomass, only organic fertilizer increases biodiversity.
- Ting-Shuai Shi
- , Scott L. Collins
- & Jian-Sheng Ye
-
Article
| Open AccessExperimental warming accelerates positive soil priming in a temperate grassland ecosystem
Soil priming could release large amounts of soil C into the atmosphere. Here the authors show that experimental warming boosts soil priming and CO2 emissions in grasslands potentially due to microbial changes. Model accuracy could be improved by incorporating these mechanisms.
- Xuanyu Tao
- , Zhifeng Yang
- & Jizhong Zhou
-
Article
| Open AccessLand management shapes drought responses of dominant soil microbial taxa across grasslands
Soil microbial communities are affected by climate extremes. Here, the authors impose experimental drought across 30 UK grasslands showing that bacteria and fungi exhibit drought resistance but that intensive management has a negative impact on fungi drought resilience.
- J. M. Lavallee
- , M. Chomel
- & R. D. Bardgett
-
Article
| Open AccessThe positive effect of plant diversity on soil carbon depends on climate
Soil carbon content is positively related with plant diversity in global grasslands, and this relationship is particularly strong in warm and arid climates. Plant diversity is related to soil carbon via the quality of organic matter.
- Marie Spohn
- , Sumanta Bagchi
- & Laura Yahdjian
-
Article
| Open AccessAn early warning signal for grassland degradation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau
Livestock grazing may drive grassland degradation. Here, the authors use process-based modelling validated with empirical data to define a stocking rate threshold across grassland on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, identify vulnerable areas and predict threshold shifts under future climate scenarios.
- Qiuan Zhu
- , Huai Chen
- & Yanfen Wang
-
Article
| Open AccessMultidimensional responses of grassland stability to eutrophication
Anthropogenic eutrophication is a driver of plant community shifts in many grassland ecosystems. Here, the authors use data from a globally distributed experiment to assess how nutrient addition affects multiple facets of grassland ecological stability and their correlations.
- Qingqing Chen
- , Shaopeng Wang
- & Yann Hautier
-
Article
| Open AccessExperimental impacts of grazing on grassland biodiversity and function are explained by aridity
Experimental evidence on the long-term impacts of livestock grazing on biodiversity and function is limited. Here, the authors show that grazing impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functions are aggravated with aridity using experimental sites across an aridity gradient.
- Minna Zhang
- , Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo
- & Ling Wang
-
Article
| Open AccessHerbivory and nutrients shape grassland soil seed banks
Seed banks are reservoirs of plant diversity. This study shows that nutrient addition decreases diversity of grassland seed banks, increases their similarity to aboveground communities and interacts with aboveground herbivory to affect their abundance.
- Anu Eskelinen
- , Maria-Theresa Jessen
- & Lauren L. Sullivan
-
Article
| Open AccessPlant community stability is associated with a decoupling of prokaryote and fungal soil networks
Soil microbial networks play a crucial role in plant community stability. This study shows that decoupled prokaryote and fungal networks in dry grassland soil support plant community stability over time, while coupled networks in abandoned agricultural soil are associated to instability.
- Dina in ‘t Zandt
- , Zuzana Kolaříková
- & Zuzana Münzbergová
-
Article
| Open AccessGlobally consistent response of plant microbiome diversity across hosts and continents to soil nutrients and herbivores
Drivers responsible for plant microbiome variation between sites remain elusive. Here, the authors test how soil nutrient addition and herbivore exclusion affect plant microbiota in grasslands worldwide, showing that microbiota diversity responded to environmental variation similarly across sites.
- Eric W. Seabloom
- , Maria C. Caldeira
- & Elizabeth T. Borer
-
Article
| Open AccessClarifying the effect of biodiversity on productivity in natural ecosystems with longitudinal data and methods for causal inference
Isolating the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in natural ecosystems is challenging. Here, the authors apply a causal inference approach to observational data from grasslands and find a negative effect of biodiversity on productivity driven by non-native and rare species.
- Laura E. Dee
- , Paul J. Ferraro
- & Michel Loreau
-
Article
| Open AccessExperimental warming causes mismatches in alpine plant-microbe-fauna phenology
Phenological shifts driven by climate change are well-studied in plants and aboveground animals, but scarcely in belowground biota. Here, the authors show that soil warming causes phenological mismatches between plants, soil microbes and soil microarthropods in an alpine meadow.
- Rui Yin
- , Wenkuan Qin
- & Biao Zhu
-
Article
| Open AccessEnvironmental heterogeneity modulates the effect of plant diversity on the spatial variability of grassland biomass
The insurance hypothesis posits that more diverse communities are more stable through time. Here, the authors show that plant biodiversity reduces the spatial variability of productivity in grassland communities, demonstrating that the insurance hypothesis applies also across space.
- Pedro Daleo
- , Juan Alberti
- & Yann Hautier
-
Article
| Open AccessNumber of simultaneously acting global change factors affects composition, diversity and productivity of grassland plant communities
Multiple co-acting environmental pressures could affect ecosystems in ways not predictable based on single factors or pairwise combinations. Here, the authors show that the number of global change factors affects productivity, species composition and diversity of grassland plant communities.
- Benedikt Speißer
- , Rutger A. Wilschut
- & Mark van Kleunen
-
Article
| Open AccessBiodiversity–stability relationships strengthen over time in a long-term grassland experiment
Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships may change over time. Here, Wagg et al. show that richness-productivity and richness stability relationships grow stronger over time in an experimental grassland community, and shed light on the ecological mechanisms.
- Cameron Wagg
- , Christiane Roscher
- & Bernhard Schmid
-
Article
| Open AccessGrowth of alpine grassland will start and stop earlier under climate warming
Climate change and earlier snowmelt could potentially extend the growing season for alpine grassland plants. Here, the authors combine field and chamber controlled experiments to show that extending the summer period did not result in prolonged root and leaf growth.
- Patrick Möhl
- , Raphael S. von Büren
- & Erika Hiltbrunner
-
Article
| Open AccessIntensive grassland management disrupts below-ground multi-trophic resource transfer in response to drought
Land use intensification could make soil food webs less able to recover from drought. Here, the authors find that intensive grassland management impairs recent photosynthate flux to roots and soil biota after drought, whereas extensive grassland management buffers the legacy of drought.
- Mathilde Chomel
- , Jocelyn M. Lavallee
- & Richard D. Bardgett
-
Article
| Open AccessThe origin and evolution of open habitats in North America inferred by Bayesian deep learning models
The expansion timing and dynamics of open vegetation are disputed. Here, the authors present a model of paleovegetation changes in North America, showing open vegetation beginning around 23 million years ago and accelerating at 5 million years ago to become the most prominent natural vegetation type in North America today.
- Tobias Andermann
- , Caroline A. E. Strömberg
- & Daniele Silvestro
-
Article
| Open AccessThe legacy of the extinct Neotropical megafauna on plants and biomes
Herbivores are important drivers of vegetation patterns and plant evolution. Dantas and Pausas investigate how mammal herbivores affected plant traits in South and Central America, revealing that historical herbivory substantially explains current trait and biome biogeography.
- Vinicius L. Dantas
- & Juli G. Pausas
-
Article
| Open AccessPersistence of plant-mediated microbial soil legacy effects in soil and inside roots
Legacies of past plant communities are likely to influence plant-soil interactions. Here, the authors report a reciprocal transplant experiment showing that soil microbial legacies shaped by previous plants persist for soil fungi and root endophytes but can be reversed by a next generation of plants for soil bacteria.
- S. Emilia Hannula
- , Robin Heinen
- & T. Martijn Bezemer
-
Article
| Open AccessContrasting responses of above- and belowground diversity to multiple components of land-use intensity
Land use intensification is a major driver of biodiversity change. Here the authors measure diversity across multiple trophic levels in agricultural grassland landscapes of varying management, finding decoupled responses of above- and belowground taxa to local factors and a strong impact of landscape-level land use.
- Gaëtane Le Provost
- , Jan Thiele
- & Peter Manning
-
Article
| Open AccessNitrogen and phosphorus fertilization consistently favor pathogenic over mutualistic fungi in grassland soils
Anthropogenic nutrient enrichment may drive shifts in soil microbial communities. Here, the authors analyse nitrogen and phosphorus addition effects on soil fungi in a distributed grassland experiment across four continents, finding promotion of pathogens, suppression of mutualists, and no shifts in saprotrophs.
- Ylva Lekberg
- , Carlos A. Arnillas
- & Jeremiah A. Henning
-
Article
| Open AccessLinking functional traits and demography to model species-rich communities
Advances in process-based community ecology models are hindered by the challenge of linking functional traits to demography in species-rich systems, where a high number of parameters need to be estimated from limited data. Here the authors propose a new Bayesian framework to calibrate community models via functional traits, and validate it in a species-rich plant community.
- Loïc Chalmandrier
- , Florian Hartig
- & Loïc Pellissier
-
Article
| Open AccessNutrients cause grassland biomass to outpace herbivory
It is unclear whether terrestrial herbivores are able to consume the extra plant biomass produced under nutrient enrichment. Here the authors test this in grasslands using a globally distributed network of coordinated field experiments, finding that wild herbivore control on grassland production declines under eutrophication.
- E. T. Borer
- , W. S. Harpole
- & E. W. Seabloom
-
Article
| Open AccessGeneral destabilizing effects of eutrophication on grassland productivity at multiple spatial scales
Eutrophication has been shown to weaken diversity-stability relationships in grasslands, but it is unclear whether the effect depends on scale. Analysing a globally distributed network of grassland sites, the authors show a positive role of beta diversity and spatial asynchrony as drivers of stability but find that nitrogen enrichment weakens the diversity-stability relationships at different spatial scales.
- Yann Hautier
- , Pengfei Zhang
- & Shaopeng Wang
-
Article
| Open AccessA quantitative framework reveals ecological drivers of grassland microbial community assembly in response to warming
Studies of microbial community assembly mechanisms typically use metrics for turnover within the whole community. Here, the authors develop an alternative approach based on turnover within lineages and dissect mechanistic change in grassland bacterial assembly under experimental warming.
- Daliang Ning
- , Mengting Yuan
- & Jizhong Zhou
-
Article
| Open AccessSoil net nitrogen mineralisation across global grasslands
Nitrogen mineralisation (Nmin), an important index of soil fertility, is often determined in the laboratory, with an uncertain relationship to Nmin under field conditions. Here the authors show that combining laboratory measurements with environmental data greatly improves predictions of field Nmin at a global scale.
- A. C. Risch
- , S. Zimmermann
- & B. Moser
-
Article
| Open AccessGlobal evidence of positive biodiversity effects on spatial ecosystem stability in natural grasslands
Biodiversity–productivity relationships in natural ecosystems are highly variable, although positive relationships are most common. Here, using HerbDivNet data, the authors show that biodiversity stabilizes rather than increases plant productivity in natural grasslands at the global scale.
- Yongfan Wang
- , Marc W. Cadotte
- & Michel Loreau
-
Article
| Open AccessRoot traits and belowground herbivores relate to plant–soil feedback variation among congeners
Most studies of plant–soil feedbacks and associated traits look at remotely-related species. Here the authors look at congeners, and show that nematode-driven plant–soil feedbacks depend on root chemical and morphological traits, independent of phylogenetic distance.
- Rutger A. Wilschut
- , Wim H. van der Putten
- & Stefan Geisen
-
Article
| Open AccessMultiple plant diversity components drive consumer communities across ecosystems
Here, Schuldt et al. collate data from two long-term grassland and forest biodiversity experiments to ask how plant diversity facets affect the diversity of higher trophic levels. The results show that positive effects of plant diversity on consumer diversity are mediated by plant structural and functional diversity, and vary across ecosystems and trophic levels.
- Andreas Schuldt
- , Anne Ebeling
- & Nico Eisenhauer
-
Article
| Open AccessPlant diversity alters the representation of motifs in food webs
Plant diversity affects ecosystem function in myriad ways, but the effect on food webs has received less investigation. Here, the authors use high-resolution food web data from a grassland diversity experiment to show that apparent and exploitative competition motifs increase with plant diversity.
- Darren P. Giling
- , Anne Ebeling
- & Jes Hines
-
Article
| Open AccessOpposite macroevolutionary responses to environmental changes in grasses and insects during the Neogene grassland expansion
The expansion of grassland plant diversity is thought to have facilitated diversification of herbivorous insects. Here, the authors show opposing evolutionary dynamics in a clade of African grasses and associated stemborers, opposing the hypothesis about grasslands as a 'cradle' of herbivore diversity.
- Gael J. Kergoat
- , Fabien L. Condamine
- & Bruno Le Ru
-
Article
| Open AccessTradeoffs in demographic mechanisms underlie differences in species abundance and stability
Protection of rare species requires advanced understanding of the reasons for their rarity. Here, Hallett et al. show that potential growth rate and density dependence together predict rarity vs. abundance, and that the stability of species of similar sizes depends on the relative strength of these two mechanisms.
- Lauren M. Hallett
- , Emily C. Farrer
- & Richard J. Hobbs
-
Article
| Open AccessSize-dependent loss of aboveground animals differentially affects grassland ecosystem coupling and functions
Defaunation can have impacts on ecosystem functioning that are currently little understood. Using an exclusion experiment, Risch et al. show the impacts of vertebrate and invertebrate losses on ecosystem coupling, particularly emphasising the role of invertebrates in ecosystem functioning.
- A. C. Risch
- , R. Ochoa-Hueso
- & M. Schütz
-
Article
| Open AccessSuper-regional land-use change and effects on the grassland specialist flora
Biodiversity declines can be difficult to attribute to habitat loss at large spatial scales. Here, the authors document land-use change in Sweden at high spatial resolution over 70 years, showing that habitat loss at local and landscape scales is associated with reduced grassland biodiversity.
- Alistair G. Auffret
- , Adam Kimberley
- & Emelie Waldén
-
Article
| Open AccessClimate warming reduces the temporal stability of plant community biomass production
Temporal stability of plant communities is driven by several mechanisms and may be influenced by climate change. Here it is shown that warming, but not precipitation, reduces species asynchrony in an alpine grassland, leading to lower biomass temporal stability.
- Zhiyuan Ma
- , Huiying Liu
- & Jin-Sheng He
-
Article
| Open AccessSoil networks become more connected and take up more carbon as nature restoration progresses
Effects of habitat restoration on belowground organisms and ecosystem processes are poorly understood. Morriën and colleagues show that changes in the composition and network interactions of soil biota lead to improved carbon uptake efficiency when formerly cultivated land is restored.
- Elly Morriën
- , S. Emilia Hannula
- & Wim H. van der Putten
-
Article
| Open AccessResponses of sequential and hierarchical phenological events to warming and cooling in alpine meadows
Describing changes in the timing of life history events is critical to understanding effects of climate change. Wang et al. relocated plant communities up and down elevation gradients and found that warming lengthened the reproductive and activity phases, while cooling reduced the vegetative and reproductive phases.
- Xine Li
- , Lili Jiang
- & Guojie Wang
-
Article
| Open AccessDual mechanisms regulate ecosystem stability under decade-long warming and hay harvest
Species diversity is thought to play an important role in maintaining production stability. Shi et al.demonstrate that the dominant C4 plant also makes a substantial contribution to temporal stability in a grassland ecosystem subject to 15 years of experimental warming and hay harvest.
- Zheng Shi
- , Xia Xu
- & Yiqi Luo
-
Article
| Open AccessDirect effects dominate responses to climate perturbations in grassland plant communities
Environmental change can have indirect effects on populations by altering the outcome of competitive interactions. Here, Chu et al. show that although direct effects dominate the responses of grassland species to climate perturbations, indirect effects could be greater among species with smaller niche differences.
- Chengjin Chu
- , Andrew R. Kleinhesselink
- & Peter B. Adler
-
Article
| Open AccessNegative global phosphorus budgets challenge sustainable intensification of grasslands
Grasslands lose soil fertility when manure from grazing livestock is spread on croplands. Here, Sattari et al. show that in order to achieve production increases that will meet global milk and meat demands for 2050, grassland phosphorus inputs must increase four-fold relative to inputs from 2005.
- S. Z. Sattari
- , A. F. Bouwman
- & M. K. van Ittersum
-
Article
| Open AccessLand use imperils plant and animal community stability through changes in asynchrony rather than diversity
Long-term stability of ecological communities is vital for maintaining ecosystem functioning. Here, Blüthgen et al. show that greater land-use intensity in grasslands and forests can have negative impacts on the stability of plant and animal communities, driven primarily by variation in asynchrony between species.
- Nico Blüthgen
- , Nadja K. Simons
- & Martin M. Gossner
-
Article
| Open AccessHigh diversity stabilizes the thermal resilience of pollinator communities in intensively managed grasslands
How variation in species responses to climate may influence the resilience of ecological communities to environmental change is not fully understood. Here, the authors characterize the thermal niches of insect pollinator communities and show that resilience increases along a gradient of land-use intensity.
- Sara Kühsel
- & Nico Blüthgen
-
Article
| Open AccessPlant species’ origin predicts dominance and response to nutrient enrichment and herbivores in global grasslands
It remains unclear whether exotic and native species are functionally different. Using a global grassland experiment, Seabloomet al. show that native and exotic species respond differently to two globally pervasive environmental changes, addition of mineral nutrients and alteration of herbivore density.
- Eric W. Seabloom
- , Elizabeth T. Borer
- & Louie Yang
-
Article |
Long-term nitrogen deposition depletes grassland seed banks
Rising levels of nitrogen deposition represents a major threat to the biodiversity and plant communities worldwide. Here Basto et al. show that increased nitrogen deposition results in reductions in the size and species richness of the seed bank in acid grassland soils.
- Sofía Basto
- , Ken Thompson
- & Mark Rees
-
Article |
Aridity threshold in controlling ecosystem nitrogen cycling in arid and semi-arid grasslands
Understanding the relationship between aridity and ecosystem N-cycling is important in predicting the effects of global climate change. Here, the authors present N isotopes across an aridity gradient and identify a tipping point, which marks a divergence in N-cycling controlling factors and mechanisms.
- Chao Wang
- , Xiaobo Wang
- & Edith Bai