Species loss due to nutrient addition increases with spatial scale in global grasslands

Eric W Seabloom; Evan Batzer; Jonathan M Chase; W Stanley Harpole; Peter B Adler; Sumanta Bagchi; Jonathan D Bakker; Isabel C Barrio; Lori Biederman; Elizabeth H Boughton; Miguel N Bugalho; Maria C Caldeira; Jane A Catford; Pedro Daleo; Nico Eisenhauer; Anu Eskelinen; Sylvia Haider; Lauren M Hallett; Ingibjörg Svala Jónsdóttir; Kaitlin Kimmel; Marirose Kuhlman; Andrew MacDougall; Cecilia D Molina; Joslin L Moore; John W Morgan; Ranjan Muthukrishnan; Timothy Ohlert; Anita C Risch; Christiane Roscher; Martin Schütz; Grégory Sonnier; Pedro M Tognetti; Risto Virtanen; Peter A Wilfahrt; Elizabeth T Borer

doi:10.1111/ele.13838

Species loss due to nutrient addition increases with spatial scale in global grasslands

Ecol Lett. 2021 Oct;24(10):2100-2112. doi: 10.1111/ele.13838. Epub 2021 Jul 9.

Authors

Eric W Seabloom¹, Evan Batzer², Jonathan M Chase^{3

4}, W Stanley Harpole^{3

5

6}, Peter B Adler⁷, Sumanta Bagchi⁸, Jonathan D Bakker⁹, Isabel C Barrio¹⁰, Lori Biederman¹¹, Elizabeth H Boughton¹², Miguel N Bugalho¹³, Maria C Caldeira¹⁴, Jane A Catford¹⁵, Pedro Daleo¹⁶, Nico Eisenhauer^{3

17}, Anu Eskelinen^{3

5

18}, Sylvia Haider^{3

19}, Lauren M Hallett²⁰, Ingibjörg Svala Jónsdóttir²¹, Kaitlin Kimmel²², Marirose Kuhlman²³, Andrew MacDougall²⁴, Cecilia D Molina²⁵, Joslin L Moore²⁶, John W Morgan²⁷, Ranjan Muthukrishnan²⁸, Timothy Ohlert²⁹, Anita C Risch³⁰, Christiane Roscher^{3

5}, Martin Schütz³⁰, Grégory Sonnier¹², Pedro M Tognetti²⁵, Risto Virtanen¹⁸, Peter A Wilfahrt¹, Elizabeth T Borer¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota. St. Paul, MN, USA.
² Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
³ German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
⁴ Department of Computer Sciences, Martin Luther University, Halle (Saale), Germany.
⁵ Department of Physiological Diversity, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany.
⁶ Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany.
⁷ Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA.
⁸ Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
⁹ School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
¹⁰ Faculty of Environmental and Forest Sciences, Agricultural University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland.
¹¹ Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames Iowa, USA.
¹² Archbold Biological Station, Venus, FL, USA.
¹³ Centre for Applied Ecology "Prof. Baeta Neves" (CEABN-InBIO), School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
¹⁴ Forest Research Centre, School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
¹⁵ Department of Geography, King's College London, London, UK.
¹⁶ Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (IIMyC), UNMDP - CONICET, Mar del Plata, Argentina.
¹⁷ Institute of Biology, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany.
¹⁸ Department of Ecology and Genetics, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland.
¹⁹ Institute of Biology / Geobotany and Botanical Garden, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany.
²⁰ Department of Biology and Environmental Studies Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA.
²¹ Institute of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland.
²² Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
²³ MPG Ranch, Missoula, MT, USA.
²⁴ University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada.
²⁵ IFEVA, Universidad de Buenos Aires, CONICET, Facultad de Agronomía, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
²⁶ School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia.
²⁷ Department of Ecology, Environment & Evolution, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia.
²⁸ Environmental Resilience Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.
²⁹ Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
³⁰ Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Community Ecology, Birmensdorf, Switzerland.

PMID: 34240557
DOI: 10.1111/ele.13838

Abstract

The effects of altered nutrient supplies and herbivore density on species diversity vary with spatial scale, because coexistence mechanisms are scale dependent. This scale dependence may alter the shape of the species-area relationship (SAR), which can be described by changes in species richness (S) as a power function of the sample area (A): S = cA^z , where c and z are constants. We analysed the effects of experimental manipulations of nutrient supply and herbivore density on species richness across a range of scales (0.01-75 m² ) at 30 grasslands in 10 countries. We found that nutrient addition reduced the number of species that could co-occur locally, indicated by the SAR intercepts (log c), but did not affect the SAR slopes (z). As a result, proportional species loss due to nutrient enrichment was largely unchanged across sampling scales, whereas total species loss increased over threefold across our range of sampling scales.

Keywords: biodiversity; community ecology; grasslands; herbivores; nutrients.

Publication types

Letter

MeSH terms

Biodiversity*
Ecosystem
Grassland*
Herbivory
Nutrients

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding