Press release: Many facets of biodiversity reduce variability of grassland biomass production

No. 170 - 27.08.2018

International research team led by Göttingen scientist publishes new study

(pug) A new study shows that, in addition to species richness, plant evolutionary history plays a critical role in regulating year-to-year variation of biomass production in grasslands. In the face of climate change, understanding the causes of variability in key ecosystem services such as biomass production is essential. A team of researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), University of Göttingen, and Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F) has published the results in the new issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. They show that multiple factors, including biodiversity and climate, jointly reduce annual variation in grassland productivity.

Biodiversity is much more than just counting species; it also includes diversity in how plants function and in the history of how they have evolved. Despite the growing appreciation for biodiversity and its role in buffering the impacts of vital ecosystem services, these other aspects of biodiversity are frequently overlooked. An international team of researchers examined how multiple facets of biodiversity contribute to year-to-year variation in grassland biomass production. The researchers measured biomass, which is the dry weight of plant matter (including grasses and other herbaceous species).

"We show that grassland communities with high species richness and high diversity in evolutionary history display reduced variation in biomass production," said Dylan Craven, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Göttingen. “Our results suggest that greater diversity in evolutionary history makes biomass production in grasslands more stable because these communities are less vulnerable to herbivore attacks or pathogen outbreaks.” The researchers also found that biomass production of plant communities dominated by slow-growing species typically varied less.

Peter Manning, the senior author of the study, said that “we were surprised by these results because we had expected that communities with a greater diversity in characteristics related to plant growth rates would have more stable biomass production but actually diversity as measured by evolutionary history and species richness were better predictors.” However, the researchers caution that lower year-to-year variation does not imply that grasslands will be more productive, and that measures of stability that consider over- and under-production may be more relevant for agroecological applications

Original publication:

Craven, D. et al. Multiple facets of biodiversity drive the diversity-stability relationship. Nature Ecology & Evolution (2018). doi: 10.1038/s41559-018-0647-7

Contact:

Dr. Dylan Craven

University of Göttingen – Department of Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography

Büsgenweg 1 – 37077 Göttingen

Phone: +49-(0)551-3910443

E-Mail: dylan.craven@uni-goettingen.de