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General Destabilizing Effects of Eutrophication on Grassland Productivity at Multiple Spatial Scales
Nature Communications
  • Yann Hautier, Utrecht University
  • Pengfei Zhang, Utrecht University
  • Michel Loreau, Centre national de la recherche scientifique
  • Kevin R. Wilcox, University of Wyoming
  • Eric W. Seabloom, University of Minnesota
  • Elizabeth T. Borer, University of Minnesota
  • Jarrett E.K. Byrnes, University of Massachusetts Boston
  • Sally E. Koerner, University of North Carolina Greensboro
  • Kimberly J. Komatsu, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
  • Jonathan S. Lefcheck, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
  • Andy Hector, Oxford University
  • Peter B. Adler, Utah State University
  • Juan Alberti, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata
  • Carlos A. Arnillas, University of Toronto at Scarborough
  • Jonathan D. Bakker, University of Washington
  • Lars A. Brudvig, Michigan State University
  • Miguel N. Bugalho, University of Lisbon
  • Marc Cadotte, University of Toronto at Scarborough
  • Maria C. Caldeira, University of Lisbon
  • Oliver Carroll, University of Guelph
  • Mick Crawley, Imperial College London
  • Scott L. Collins, University of New Mexico
  • Pedro Daleo, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata
  • Laura E. Dee, University of Colorado at Boulder
  • Nico Eisenhauer, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
  • Anu Eskelinen, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
  • Philip A. Fay, USDA-ARS Grassland, Soil, and Water Research Laboratory
  • Benjamin Gilbert, University of Toronto
  • Amandine Hansar, Paris Sciences et Lettres University
  • Forest Isbell, University of Minnesota
  • Johannes M.H. Knops, Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University
  • Andrew S. MacDougall, University of Guelph
  • Rebecca L. McCulley, University of Kentucky
  • Joslin L. Moore, Monash University, Clayton Campus
  • John W. Morgan, La Trobe University
  • Akira S. Mori, Yokohama National University
  • Pablo L. Peri, Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral
  • Edwin T. Pos, Utrecht University
  • Sally A. Power, Western Sydney University
  • Jodi N. Price, Charles Sturt University
  • Peter B. Reich, Western Sydney University
  • Anita C. Risch, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
  • Christiane Roscher, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
  • Mahesh Sankaran, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
  • Martin Schütz, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
  • Melinda Smith, Colorado State University
  • Carly Stevens, Lancaster University
  • Pedro M. Tognetti, Universidad de Buenos Aires
  • Risto Virtanen, University of Oulu
  • Glenda M. Wardle, University of Sydney
  • Peter A. Wilfahrt, University of Wyoming
  • Shaopeng Wang, Peking University
Document Type
Article
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Publication Date
10-23-2020
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Abstract

Eutrophication is a widespread environmental change that usually reduces the stabilizing effect of plant diversity on productivity in local communities. Whether this effect is scale dependent remains to be elucidated. Here, we determine the relationship between plant diversity and temporal stability of productivity for 243 plant communities from 42 grasslands across the globe and quantify the effect of chronic fertilization on these relationships. Unfertilized local communities with more plant species exhibit greater asynchronous dynamics among species in response to natural environmental fluctuations, resulting in greater local stability (alpha stability). Moreover, neighborhood communities that have greater spatial variation in plant species composition within sites (higher beta diversity) have greater spatial asynchrony of productivity among communities, resulting in greater stability at the larger scale (gamma stability). Importantly, fertilization consistently weakens the contribution of plant diversity to both of these stabilizing mechanisms, thus diminishing the positive effect of biodiversity on stability at differing spatial scales. Our findings suggest that preserving grassland functional stability requires conservation of plant diversity within and among ecological communities.

Citation Information
Hautier, Y., Zhang, P., Loreau, M. et al. General destabilizing effects of eutrophication on grassland productivity at multiple spatial scales. Nat Commun 11, 5375 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19252-4