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- Title
Soil microbes drive the classic plant diversity-productivity pattern.
- Authors
Schnitzer, Stefan A.; Klironomos, John N.; HilleRisLambers, Janneke; Kinkel, Linda L.; Reich, Peter B.; Kun Xiao; Rillig, Matthias C.; Sikes, Benjamin A.; Callaway, Ragan M.; Mangan, Scott A.; van Nes, Egbert H.; Scheffer, Marten
- Abstract
Ecosystem productivity commonly increases asymptotically with plant species diversity, and determining the mechanisms responsible for this well-known pattern is essential to predict potential changes in ecosystem productivity with ongoing species loss. Previous studies attributed the asymptotic diversity-productivity pattern to plant competition and differential resource use (e.g., niche complementarity). Using an analytical model and a series of experiments, we demonstrate theoretically and empirically that host-specific soil microbes can be major determinants of the diversity productivity relationship in grasslands. In the presence of soil microbes, plant diseasedecreased with increasing diversity, and productivity increased nearly 500%, primarily because of the strong effect of density-dependent disease on productivity at low diversity. Correspondingly, disease was higher in plants grown in conspecific-trained soils than heterospecific-trained soils (demonstrating host-specificity), and productivity increased and host-specific disease decreased with increasing community diversity, suggesting that disease was the primary cause of reduced productivity in species- poor treatments. In sterilized, microbe-free soils, the increase in productivity with increasing plant species number was markedly lower than the increase measured in the presence of soil microbes, suggesting that niche complementarity was a weaker determinant of the diversity- productivity relationship. Our results demonstrate that soil microbes play an integral role as determinants of the diversity-productivity relationship.
- Subjects
PLANT species diversity; ECOSYSTEM management; CROPS &; soils; SOIL microbiology; PLANT-soil relationships
- Publication
Ecology, 2011, Vol 92, Issue 2, p296
- ISSN
0012-9658
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1890/10-0773.1