Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 24, Issue 3, Pages 487-497Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/ele.13663
Keywords
biodiversity loss; biodiversity‐ ecosystem function; consumer effects; ecosystem CO2 fluxes; plant‐ herbivore interaction; plant‐ pathogen interaction
Categories
Funding
- US National Science Foundation Long-Term Ecological Research Program (LTER) [DEB-1234162, DEB-1831944]
- UMN Graduate School, from EEB
- Cedar Creek
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Plant diversity and plant-consumer/pathogen interactions influence ecosystem carbon fluxes. Experimental removal of foliar fungi increased GPP and NEE, especially in low plant diversity scenarios. The effect disappeared when soil fungi and arthropods were also removed.
Plant diversity and plant-consumer/pathogen interactions likely interact to influence ecosystem carbon fluxes but experimental evidence is scarce. We examined how experimental removal of foliar fungi, soil fungi and arthropods from experimental prairies planted with 1, 4 or 16 plant species affected instantaneous rates of carbon uptake (GPP), ecosystem respiration (R-e) and net ecosystem exchange (NEE). Increasing plant diversity increased plant biomass, GPP and R-e, but NEE remained unchanged. Removing foliar fungi increased GPP and NEE, with the greatest effects at low plant diversity. After accounting for plant biomass, we found that removing foliar fungi increased mass-specific flux rates in the low-diversity plant communities by altering plant species composition and community-wide foliar nitrogen content. However, this effect disappeared when soil fungi and arthropods were also removed, demonstrating that both plant diversity and interactions among consumer groups determine the ecosystem-scale effects of plant-fungal interactions.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available