Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Borer, Elizabeth T.
• Seabloom, Eric W.
• Gruner, Daniel S.
• Harpole, W. Stanley
• Hillebrand, Helmut
• Lind, Eric M.
• Adler, Peter B.
• Alberti, Juan
• Anderson, T. Michael
• Bakker, Jonathan D.
• Biederman, Lori
• Blumenthal, Dana
• Brown, Cynthia S.
• Brudvig, Lars A.
• Buckley, Yvonne M.
• Cadotte, Marc
• Chu, Chengjin
• Cleland, Elsa E.
• Crawley, Michael J.
• Daleo, Pedro
• Damschen, Ellen I.
• Davies, Kendi F.
• DeCrappeo, Nicole M.
• Du, Guozhen
• Firn, Jennifer
• Hautier, Yann
• Heckman, Robert W.
• Hector, Andy
• HilleRisLambers, Janneke
• Iribarne, Oscar
• Klein, Julia A.
• Knops, Johannes M. H.
• La Pierre, Kimberly J.
• Leakey, Andrew D. B.
• Li, Wei
• MacDougall, Andrew S.
• McCulley, Rebecca L.
• Melbourne, Brett A.
• Mitchell, Charles E.
• Moore, Joslin L.
• Mortensen, Brent
• O'Halloran, Lydia R.
• Orrock, John L.
• Pascual, Jesús
• Prober, Suzanne M.
• Pyke, David A.
• Risch, Anita C.
• Schuetz, Martin
• Smith, Melinda D.
• Stevens, Carly J.
• Sullivan, Lauren L.
• Williams, Ryan J.
• Wragg, Peter D.
• Wright, Justin P.
• Yang, Louie H.

Titel

Herbivores and nutrients control grassland plant diversity via light limitation

Ist Teil von

• Nature (London), 2014-04, Vol.508 (7497), p.517-520

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

EBSCO - Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Experimental data collected from 40 grasslands on 6 continents show that nutrients and herbivores can serve as counteracting forces to control local plant diversity; nutrient addition reduces local diversity through light limitation, and herbivory rescues diversity at sites where it alleviates light limitation. Shedding light on grazing and biodiversity Human activity has affected grassland biodiversity through the addition of both nutrients and grazing. Theory predicts that these factors could balance each other because they have opposing effects on light limitation, and this international collaboration across 40 experimental sites on six continents — from the 41 Nutrient Network (NutNet) cooperative — puts the theory to the test. The results demonstrate a consistent counteracting effect, with nutrient addition and herbivores jointly controlling plant diversity via light: nutrients reduce ground-level light thereby reducing plant diversity, and herbivores increase plant diversity by reducing competition for light among plants. This work will contribute towards more accurate modelling of the effects of grazing practices and nitrogen deposition on biodiversity in the world's grasslands. In a second paper in this issue of Nature , Yann Hautier et al . studied the influence of eutrophication in the NutNet grassland sites and show that the use of fertilizers is not only a threat to grassland biodiversity but also to the stabilizing effect it has on ecosystem functioning. Human alterations to nutrient cycles 1 , 2 and herbivore communities 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 are affecting global biodiversity dramatically 2 . Ecological theory predicts these changes should be strongly counteractive: nutrient addition drives plant species loss through intensified competition for light, whereas herbivores prevent competitive exclusion by increasing ground-level light, particularly in productive systems 8 , 9 . Here we use experimental data spanning a globally relevant range of conditions to test the hypothesis that herbaceous plant species losses caused by eutrophication may be offset by increased light availability due to herbivory. This experiment, replicated in 40 grasslands on 6 continents, demonstrates that nutrients and herbivores can serve as counteracting forces to control local plant diversity through light limitation, independent of site productivity, soil nitrogen, herbivore type and climate. Nutrient addition consistently reduced local diversity through light limitation, and herbivory rescued diversity at sites where it alleviated light limitation. Thus, species loss from anthropogenic eutrophication can be ameliorated in grasslands where herbivory increases ground-level light.