Nutrients and herbivores impact grassland stability across spatial scales through different pathways
Chen, Qingqing; Wang, Shaopeng; Seabloom, Eric W; MacDougall, Andrew S; Borer, Elizabeth T; Bakker, Jonathan D; Donohue, Ian; Knops, Johannes M H; Morgan, John W; Carroll, Oliver; Crawley, Mick; Bugalho, Miguel N; Power, Sally A; Eskelinen, Anu; Virtanen, Risto; Risch, Anita C; Schütz, Martin; Stevens, Carly; Caldeira, Maria C; Bagchi, Sumanta; Alberti, Juan; Hautier, Yann
(2022) Global Change Biology, volume 28, issue 8, pp. 2678 - 2688
(Article)
Abstract
Nutrients and herbivores are well-known drivers of grassland diversity and stability in local communities. However, whether they interact to impact the stability of aboveground biomass and whether these effects depend on spatial scales remain unknown. It is also unclear whether nutrients and herbivores impact stability via different facets of plant
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diversity including species richness, evenness, and changes in community composition through time and space. We used a replicated experiment adding nutrients and excluding herbivores for 5 years in 34 global grasslands to explore these questions. We found that both nutrient addition and herbivore exclusion alone reduced stability at the larger spatial scale (aggregated local communities; gamma stability), but through different pathways. Nutrient addition reduced gamma stability primarily by increasing changes in local community composition over time, which was mainly driven by species replacement. Herbivore exclusion reduced gamma stability primarily by decreasing asynchronous dynamics among local communities (spatial asynchrony). Their interaction weakly increased gamma stability by increasing spatial asynchrony. Our findings indicate that disentangling the processes operating at different spatial scales may improve conservation and management aiming at maintaining the ability of ecosystems to reliably provide functions and services for humanity.
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Keywords: Nutrient Network (NutNet), biodiversity-stability, cross-scale, eutrophication, grazing, Taverne, Global and Planetary Change, Environmental Chemistry, Ecology, General Environmental Science
ISSN: 1354-1013
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (10.1111)
Note: Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31988102, 32122053). This work was generated using data from the NutNet ( http://www.nutnet.org ) experiment, funded at the site‐scale by individual researchers. Coordination and data management have been supported by funding to E. Borer and E. Seabloom from the National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network (NSF‐DEB‐1042132) and Long Term Ecological Research (NSF‐DEB‐1234162 and NSF‐DEB‐1831944 to Cedar Creek LTER) programs, and the Institute on the Environment (DG‐0001‐13). We also thank the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute for hosting project data and the Institute on the Environment for hosting Network meetings. Nitrogen fertilizer was donated to the NutNet by Crop Production Services, Loveland, CO. We thank Maowei Liang for helpful discussion and two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their constructive comments and suggestions to improve our manuscript. Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31988102, 32122053). This work was generated using data from the NutNet (http://www.nutnet.org) experiment, funded at the site-scale by individual researchers. Coordination and data management have been supported by funding to E. Borer and E. Seabloom from the National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network (NSF-DEB-1042132) and Long Term Ecological Research (NSF-DEB-1234162 and NSF-DEB-1831944 to Cedar Creek LTER) programs, and the Institute on the Environment (DG-0001-13). We also thank the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute for hosting project data and the Institute on the Environment for hosting Network meetings. Nitrogen fertilizer was donated to the NutNet by Crop Production Services, Loveland, CO. We thank Maowei Liang for helpful discussion and two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their constructive comments and suggestions to improve our manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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