ALBERT

Description: At eight European field sites, the impact of loss of plant diversity on primary productivity was simulated by synthesizing grassland communities with different numbers of plant species. Results differed in detail at each location, but there was an overall log-linear reduction of average aboveground biomass with loss of species. For a given number of species, communities with fewer functional groups were less productive. These diversity effects occurred along with differences associated with species composition and geographic location. Niche complementarity and positive species interactions appear to play a role in generating diversity-productivity relationships within sites in addition to sampling from the species pool.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Hector -- Schmid -- Beierkuhnlein -- Caldeira -- Diemer -- Dimitrakopoulos -- Finn -- Freitas -- Giller -- Good -- Harris -- Hogberg -- Huss-Danell -- Joshi -- Jumpponen -- Korner -- Leadley -- Loreau -- Minns -- Mulder -- O'Donovan -- Otway -- Pereira -- Prinz -- Read -- et -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1999 Nov 5;286(5442):1123-7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College at Silwood Park, Ascot, Berkshire, UK, GB-SL5 7PY. Institut fur Umweltwissenschaften, Universitat Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, Zurich, Switzerland.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10550043" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: The search for predictions of species diversity across environmental gradients has challenged ecologists for decades. The humped-back model (HBM) suggests that plant diversity peaks at intermediate productivity; at low productivity few species can tolerate the environmental stresses, and at high productivity a few highly competitive species dominate. Over time the HBM has become increasingly controversial, and recent studies claim to have refuted it. Here, by using data from coordinated surveys conducted throughout grasslands worldwide and comprising a wide range of site productivities, we provide evidence in support of the HBM pattern at both global and regional extents. The relationships described here provide a foundation for further research into the local, landscape, and historical factors that maintain biodiversity.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Fraser, Lauchlan H -- Pither, Jason -- Jentsch, Anke -- Sternberg, Marcelo -- Zobel, Martin -- Askarizadeh, Diana -- Bartha, Sandor -- Beierkuhnlein, Carl -- Bennett, Jonathan A -- Bittel, Alex -- Boldgiv, Bazartseren -- Boldrini, Ilsi I -- Bork, Edward -- Brown, Leslie -- Cabido, Marcelo -- Cahill, James -- Carlyle, Cameron N -- Campetella, Giandiego -- Chelli, Stefano -- Cohen, Ofer -- Csergo, Anna-Maria -- Diaz, Sandra -- Enrico, Lucas -- Ensing, David -- Fidelis, Alessandra -- Fridley, Jason D -- Foster, Bryan -- Garris, Heath -- Goheen, Jacob R -- Henry, Hugh A L -- Hohn, Maria -- Jouri, Mohammad Hassan -- Klironomos, John -- Koorem, Kadri -- Lawrence-Lodge, Rachael -- Long, Ruijun -- Manning, Pete -- Mitchell, Randall -- Moora, Mari -- Muller, Sandra C -- Nabinger, Carlos -- Naseri, Kamal -- Overbeck, Gerhard E -- Palmer, Todd M -- Parsons, Sheena -- Pesek, Mari -- Pillar, Valerio D -- Pringle, Robert M -- Roccaforte, Kathy -- Schmidt, Amanda -- Shang, Zhanhuan -- Stahlmann, Reinhold -- Stotz, Gisela C -- Sugiyama, Shu-ichi -- Szentes, Szilard -- Thompson, Don -- Tungalag, Radnaakhand -- Undrakhbold, Sainbileg -- van Rooyen, Margaretha -- Wellstein, Camilla -- Wilson, J Bastow -- Zupo, Talita -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Jul 17;349(6245):302-5. doi: 10.1126/science.aab3916.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC, Canada. lfraser@tru.ca. ; Department of Biology, University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus, Kelowna, BC, Canada. ; Department of Disturbance Ecology, BayCEER, Uni- versity of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany. ; Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. ; Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. ; Faculty of Natural Resources College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Iran. ; MTA Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Vacratot, Hungary, and School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia. ; Department of Biogeography, BayCEER, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany. ; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Manhattan, KS 66047, USA. ; Department of Biology, National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; Department of Botany, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. ; Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. ; Applied Behavioural Ecology and Ecosystem Research Unit, University of South Africa, Johannesberg, South Africa. ; Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biologia Vegetal (IMBIV-CONICET) and Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Cordoba, Espana. ; School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Camerino, Camerino, Italy. ; School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland. ; Departamento de Botanica, UNESP - Univ. Estadual Paulista, Rio Claro, Brazil. ; Department of Biology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13210, USA. ; Department of Biology, University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325, USA. ; Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA. ; Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada. ; Department of Botany, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary. ; Department of Natural Resources, Islamic Azad University, Nour Branch, Iran. ; Department of Botany, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. ; International Centre for Tibetan Plateau Ecosystem Management, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China. ; Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Altenbergrain 21, CH-3013, Bern, Switzerland. ; Department of Ecology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. ; Faculty of Agronomy, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. ; Department of Range and Watershed Management, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. ; Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. ; Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC, Canada. ; Laboratory of Plant Ecology, Hirosaki University, Hirosaki, Japan. ; Institute of Plant Production, Szent Istvan University, Godollo, Hungary. ; Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge Research Centre, Lethbridge, AB, Canada. ; Department of Plant Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. ; Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy. ; Department of Botany, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Landcare Research, Dunedin, New Zealand.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26185249" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Tredennick et al. criticize one of our statistical analyses and emphasize the low explanatory power of models relating productivity to diversity. These criticisms do not detract from our key findings, including evidence consistent with the unimodal constraint relationship predicted by the humped-back model and evidence of scale sensitivities in the form and strength of the relationship.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Pither, Jason -- Fraser, Lauchlan H -- Jentsch, Anke -- Sternberg, Marcelo -- Zobel, Martin -- Cahill, James -- Beierkuhnlein, Carl -- Bartha, Sandor -- Bennett, Jonathan A -- Boldgiv, Bazartseren -- Brown, Leslie R -- Cabido, Marcelo -- Campetella, Giandiego -- Carlyle, Cameron N -- Chelli, Stefano -- Csergo, Anna Maria -- Diaz, Sandra -- Enrico, Lucas -- Ensing, David -- Fidelis, Alessandra -- Garris, Heath W -- Henry, Hugh A L -- Hohn, Maria -- Klironomos, John -- Koorem, Kadri -- Lawrence-Lodge, Rachael -- Manning, Peter -- Mitchell, Randall J -- Moora, Mari -- Pillar, Valerio D -- Stotz, Gisela C -- Sugiyama, Shu-ichi -- Szentes, Szilard -- Tungalag, Radnaakhand -- Undrakhbold, Sainbileg -- Wellstein, Camilla -- Zupo, Talita -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2016 Jan 29;351(6272):457. doi: 10.1126/science.aad8019.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Biology, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Kelowna, BC, Canada. jason.pither@ubc.ca. ; Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC, Canada. ; Department of Disturbance Ecology, BayCEER, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany. ; Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. ; Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. ; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. ; Department of Biogeography, Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research (BayCEER), University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany. ; Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Vacratot, Hungary. School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia. ; Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. ; Ecology Group, Department of Biology, National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; Department of Environmental Sciences, University of South Africa, Florida, South Africa. ; Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Cordoba, Argentina. ; School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine, Plant Diversity and Ecosystems Management Unit, University of Camerino, Camerino, Italy. ; Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. ; School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland. ; Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biologia Vegetal (IMBIV), National Scientific and Technical Research Council and Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Cordoba, Argentina. ; Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. ; Departamento de Botanica, UNESP - Universidade Estadual Paulista, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil. ; Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. ; Department of Botany, Faculty of Horticultural Science, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. ; Department of Biology, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Kelowna, BC, Canada. ; Department of Botany, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. ; Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Senckenberg Gesellschaft fur Naturforschung, Germany. ; Department of Biology, University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA. ; Department of Ecology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. ; Faculty of Agriculture and Life Science, Hirosaki University, Aomori, Japan. ; Institute of Plant Production, Szent Istvan University, Godollo, Hungary. ; Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26823419" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: It remains unclear whether biodiversity buffers ecosystems against climate extremes, which are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. Early results suggested that the ecosystem productivity of diverse grassland plant communities was more resistant, changing less during drought, and more resilient, recovering more quickly after drought, than that of depauperate communities. However, subsequent experimental tests produced mixed results. Here we use data from 46 experiments that manipulated grassland plant diversity to test whether biodiversity provides resistance during and resilience after climate events. We show that biodiversity increased ecosystem resistance for a broad range of climate events, including wet or dry, moderate or extreme, and brief or prolonged events. Across all studies and climate events, the productivity of low-diversity communities with one or two species changed by approximately 50% during climate events, whereas that of high-diversity communities with 16-32 species was more resistant, changing by only approximately 25%. By a year after each climate event, ecosystem productivity had often fully recovered, or overshot, normal levels of productivity in both high- and low-diversity communities, leading to no detectable dependence of ecosystem resilience on biodiversity. Our results suggest that biodiversity mainly stabilizes ecosystem productivity, and productivity-dependent ecosystem services, by increasing resistance to climate events. Anthropogenic environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss thus seem likely to decrease ecosystem stability, and restoration of biodiversity to increase it, mainly by changing the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate events.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Isbell, Forest -- Craven, Dylan -- Connolly, John -- Loreau, Michel -- Schmid, Bernhard -- Beierkuhnlein, Carl -- Bezemer, T Martijn -- Bonin, Catherine -- Bruelheide, Helge -- de Luca, Enrica -- Ebeling, Anne -- Griffin, John N -- Guo, Qinfeng -- Hautier, Yann -- Hector, Andy -- Jentsch, Anke -- Kreyling, Jurgen -- Lanta, Vojtech -- Manning, Pete -- Meyer, Sebastian T -- Mori, Akira S -- Naeem, Shahid -- Niklaus, Pascal A -- Polley, H Wayne -- Reich, Peter B -- Roscher, Christiane -- Seabloom, Eric W -- Smith, Melinda D -- Thakur, Madhav P -- Tilman, David -- Tracy, Benjamin F -- van der Putten, Wim H -- van Ruijven, Jasper -- Weigelt, Alexandra -- Weisser, Wolfgang W -- Wilsey, Brian -- Eisenhauer, Nico -- England -- Nature. 2015 Oct 22;526(7574):574-7. doi: 10.1038/nature15374. Epub 2015 Oct 14.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA. ; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; Institute of Biology, Leipzig University, Johannisallee 21, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; Ecological and Environmental Modelling Group, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland. ; Centre for Biodiversity Theory and Modelling, Experimental Ecology Station, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Moulis 09200, France. ; Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland. ; Department of Biogeography, BayCEER, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany. ; Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), PO Box 50, 6700 AB Wageningen, The Netherlands. ; Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA. ; Institute of Biology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 06108 Halle, Germany. ; Institute of Ecology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Dornburger Strasse 159, 07743 Jena, Germany. ; Department of Biosciences, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA28PP, UK. ; USDA FS, Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center, RTP, North Carolina 27709, USA. ; Ecology and Biodiversity Group, Department of Biology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands. ; Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK. ; Disturbance Ecology, BayCEER, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany. ; Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald, D-17487 Greifswald, Germany. ; Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Branisovska 31, 37005 Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. ; Institute for Plant Sciences, University of Bern, CH-3013 Bern, Switzerland. ; Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technische Universitat Munchen, 85354 Freising, Germany. ; Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, 79-7 Tokiwadai, Hodogaya, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 240-8501, Japan. ; Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA. ; US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Grassland, Soil and Water Research Laboratory, Temple, Texas 76502, USA. ; Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55108 USA. ; Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, New South Wales 2753, Australia. ; UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Community Ecology, 06120 Halle, Germany. ; Graduate Degree Program in Ecology and Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA. ; Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106 USA. ; Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences, Smyth Hall 0404, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA. ; Laboratory of Nematology, Wageningen University and Research Centre, PO Box 8123, 6700 ES Wageningen, The Netherlands. ; Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands. ; Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26466564" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of experimental drought manipulation studies using rain-out shelters in five sites of natural grassland ecosystems of Europe. The single studies assess the effects of extreme drought on the intraspecific variation of the specific leaf area (SLA), a proxy of plant growth. We evaluate and compare the effect size of the SLA response for the functional groups of forbs and grasses in temperate and sub-Mediterranean systems. We hypothesized that the functional groups of grasses and forbs from temperate grassland systems have different strategies in short-term drought response, measured as adjustment of SLA, with SLA-reduction in grasses and SLA-maintenance in forbs. Second, we hypothesized that grasses and forbs from sub-Mediterranean systems do not differ in their drought response as both groups maintain their SLA. We found a significant decrease of SLA in grasses of the temperate systems in response to drought while SLA of forbs showed no significant response. Lower SLA is associated with enhanced water use efficiency under water stress and thus can be seen as a strategy of phenotypic adjustment. By contrast, in the sub-Mediterranean systems, grasses significantly increased their SLA in the drought treatment. This result points towards a better growth performance of these grasses, which is most likely related to their strategy to allocate resources to belowground parts. The observed SLA reduction of forbs is most likely a direct drought response given that competitive effect of grasses are unlikely due to the scanty vegetation cover. We point out that phenotypic adjustment is an important driver of short-term functional plant response to climatic extremes such as drought. Differential reactions of functional groups have to be interpreted against the background of the group's evolutionary configuration that can differ between climatic zones. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.