Higher effect of plant species diversity on productivity in natural than artificial ecosystems

被引:110
作者
Flombaum, Pedro [1 ]
Sala, Osvaldo E. [1 ,2 ]
机构
[1] Brown Univ, Dept Ecol & Evolutionary Biol, Providence, RI 02912 USA
[2] Brown Univ, Dept Environm Change Initiat, Providence, RI 02912 USA
关键词
biodiversity; carbon cycle; ecosystem functioning; Patagonian steppe; resource partitioning;
D O I
10.1073/pnas.0704801105
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Current and expected changes in biodiversity have motivated major experiments, which reported a positive relationship between plant species diversity and primary production. As a first step in addressing this relationship, these manipulative experiments controlled as many potential confounding covariables as possible and assembled artificial ecosystems for the purpose of the experiments. As a new step in this endeavor, we asked how plant species richness relates to productivity in a natural ecosystem. Here, we report on an experiment conducted in a natural ecosystem in the Patagonian steppe, in which we assessed the biodiversity effect on primary production. Using a plant species diversity gradient generated by removing species while maintaining constant biomass, we found that aboveground net primary production increased with the number of plant species. We also found that the biodiversity effect was larger in natural than in artificial ecosystems. This result supports previous findings and also suggests that the effect of biodiversity in natural ecosystems may be much larger than currently thought.
引用
收藏
页码:6087 / 6090
页数:4
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