What is it about?
Multiple things change over time and biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning seems to be one of this. Usually, biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning increase over time. Yet, we did not know if this was the result of function increasing in high diversity communities, decreasing in low diversity communities, or both thing happening at the same time. Until now.
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Why is it important?
Our paper is important because we trace the effects of high and low diversity on productivity over time.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Diversity-dependent temporal divergence of ecosystem functioning in experimental ecosystems, Nature Ecology & Evolution, October 2017, Nature,
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0325-1.
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Better, worse, or both? The temporal paradox of diverse plant communities
Behind the scenes blog about our article.
Diversity-dependent temporal divergence of ecosystem functioning in experimental ecosystems
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Better, worse, or both? The temporal paradox of diverse plant communities
Biodiversity effects on biomass production usually increase over time in grasslands and forests. Yet, we do not know if this is the result of function increasing in high diversity communities, decreasing in low diversity communities, or both things happening at the same time. Understanding temporal changes of low and high diversity communities can have multiple implications for the provisioning of ecosystem services, given the prevalence of low diversity communities in productive landscapes. Imagine for a moment that your favorite football team is becoming better year after year and is now heads and shoulders above other teams. Your team’s success can be the result of the good performance of your team, the bad performance of the other teams or both things happening at the same time. Now, let’s steer away from football and return to plant communities. Evidence suggests that high diversity plant communities are doing better year after year, breaking away from low diversity communities (in terms of their biomass production). This can be the result of how well high diversity communities are doing, that low diversity communities are doing worse, or both. An international team of researchers used 26 long-term grassland and forest experimental ecosystems to understand how biodiversity effects change over time. The results of this study are published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. “We wanted to determine if the increase of biodiversity effect on biomass production is the result of high diversity communities doing better, low diversity communities doing worse or both. Moreover, we wanted to know if the trend underlying temporal changes was constant between ecosystems and among sites”, said Nathaly Guerrero-Ramírez a doctoral researcher from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig. The authors found that the increase in biodiversity effects in grasslands experiments can result in either high diversity communities doing well, low diversity communities doing worse, or both. Interestingly, soil conditions affected which trend underlies the increase in biodiversity effects, making some areas more susceptible to a decrease in biomass production over time. In contrast, high diversity forest communities are better from the beginning, accumulating more and more biomass through time. “Low diversity communities are a big part of our productive landscapes, for example crops and tree plantations. Thus, a decrease in the function of low diversity communities over time can have multiple implications for the provisioning of vital ecosystem services. We consider that management practices that reinforce diversity, either by having multiple plant species at the same time or varying plant species over time, can contribute to attenuate the decrease or increase biomass production”, said Nathaly. By Elena Motivans and Nathaly Guerrero
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