Published

Left =1994 Big Biodiversity herbaceous community plots. Rectangular grid adjacent to lower right corner of Big Bio = 2012 forest biodiversity experiment (FAB l) high density forest plots. Far right gridded section = 2015 forest biodiversity experiment (FAB ll) low density plots.
Credit: Forest Isbell

Research in the 1990s demonstrated that more diverse herbaceous plant communities are more productive and exhibit less year-to-year variability in net primary productivity (NPP). Recently, this positive relationship has also been observed in forest communities. New CDR LTER research also indicates that the relationship increases in strength with experiment duration in grasslands. Recent network-wide synthesis projects are scaling results up from biodiversity experiments to natural communities and testing predictions.

 

Learn more

  1. Grossman, JJ et al. 2017. Species richness and traits predict overyielding in stem growth in an early-successional tree diversity experiment. Ecology. doi: 10.1002/ecy.1958
  2. Hautier, Y et al. 2015. Anthropogenic environmental changes affect ecosystem stability via biodiversity. Science. doi: 10.1126/science. aaa1788
  3. Reich, PB et al. 2012. Impacts of biodiversity loss escalate through time as redundancy fades. Science. doi: 10.1126/science.1217909
  4. Seabloom, EW et al. 2017. Food webs obscure the strength of plant diversity effects on primary productivity. Ecology Letters. doi: 10.1111/ele.12754

Contact

Eric Seabloom
seabloom@umn.edu

Posted:  July 15, 2020