Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 269, Issue 1506, Pages 2277-2283Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2002.2146
Keywords
bacteria; diversity; ecosystem function; invisibility; microcosm; productivity
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Decreasing species diversity is thought to both reduce community productivity and increase invasibility to other species. However, it remains unclear whether identical mechanisms drive both diversity-productivity and diversity-invisibility relationships. We found a positive diversity-productivity relationship and negative diversity-invisibility and productivity-invisibility relationships using microcosm communities constructed from spatial niche specialist genotypes of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens. The primary mechanism driving these relationships was a dominance (or selection) effect: more diverse communities were more likely to contain the most productive and least invasible type. Statistical elimination of the dominance effect greatly weakened the diversity-invisibility relationship and eliminated the diversity-productivity relationship, but also revealed the operation of additional mechanisms (niche complementarity, positive and negative interactions) for particular combinations of niche specialists. However, these mechanisms differed for invasibility and productivity responses, resulting in the invisibility-productivity relationship changing from strongly negative to weakly positive. In the absence of the dominance effect, which may be an experimental artefact, decreasing diversity can have unexpected or no effects on ecosystem properties.
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