TY - JOUR
T1 - The results of biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments are realistic
AU - Jochum, Malte
AU - Fischer, Markus
AU - Isbell, Forest
AU - Roscher, Christiane
AU - van der Plas, Fons
AU - Boch, Steffen
AU - Boenisch, Gerhard
AU - Buchmann, Nina
AU - Catford, Jane A.
AU - Cavender-Bares, Jeannine
AU - Ebeling, Anne
AU - Eisenhauer, Nico
AU - Gleixner, Gerd
AU - Hölzel, Norbert
AU - Kattge, Jens
AU - Klaus, Valentin H.
AU - Kleinebecker, Till
AU - Lange, Markus
AU - Le Provost, Gaëtane
AU - Meyer, Sebastian T.
AU - Molina-Venegas, Rafael
AU - Mommer, Liesje
AU - Oelmann, Yvonne
AU - Penone, Caterina
AU - Prati, Daniel
AU - Reich, Peter B.
AU - Rindisbacher, Abiel
AU - Schäfer, Deborah
AU - Scheu, Stefan
AU - Schmid, Bernhard
AU - Tilman, David
AU - Tscharntke, Teja
AU - Vogel, Anja
AU - Wagg, Cameron
AU - Weigelt, Alexandra
AU - Weisser, Wolfgang W.
AU - Wilcke, Wolfgang
AU - Manning, Peter
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2020/11/1
Y1 - 2020/11/1
N2 - A large body of research shows that biodiversity loss can reduce ecosystem functioning. However, much of the evidence for this relationship is drawn from biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments in which biodiversity loss is simulated by randomly assembling communities of varying species diversity, and ecosystem functions are measured. This random assembly has led some ecologists to question the relevance of biodiversity experiments to real-world ecosystems, where community assembly or disassembly may be non-random and influenced by external drivers, such as climate, soil conditions or land use. Here, we compare data from real-world grassland plant communities with data from two of the largest and longest-running grassland biodiversity experiments (the Jena Experiment in Germany and BioDIV in the United States) in terms of their taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity and functional-trait composition. We found that plant communities of biodiversity experiments cover almost all of the multivariate variation of the real-world communities, while also containing community types that are not currently observed in the real world. Moreover, they have greater variance in their compositional features than their real-world counterparts. We then re-analysed a subset of experimental data that included only ecologically realistic communities (that is, those comparable to real-world communities). For 10 out of 12 biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships, biodiversity effects did not differ significantly between the full dataset of biodiversity experiments and the ecologically realistic subset of experimental communities. Although we do not provide direct evidence for strong or consistent biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships in real-world communities, our results demonstrate that the results of biodiversity experiments are largely insensitive to the exclusion of unrealistic communities and that the conclusions drawn from biodiversity experiments are generally robust.
AB - A large body of research shows that biodiversity loss can reduce ecosystem functioning. However, much of the evidence for this relationship is drawn from biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments in which biodiversity loss is simulated by randomly assembling communities of varying species diversity, and ecosystem functions are measured. This random assembly has led some ecologists to question the relevance of biodiversity experiments to real-world ecosystems, where community assembly or disassembly may be non-random and influenced by external drivers, such as climate, soil conditions or land use. Here, we compare data from real-world grassland plant communities with data from two of the largest and longest-running grassland biodiversity experiments (the Jena Experiment in Germany and BioDIV in the United States) in terms of their taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity and functional-trait composition. We found that plant communities of biodiversity experiments cover almost all of the multivariate variation of the real-world communities, while also containing community types that are not currently observed in the real world. Moreover, they have greater variance in their compositional features than their real-world counterparts. We then re-analysed a subset of experimental data that included only ecologically realistic communities (that is, those comparable to real-world communities). For 10 out of 12 biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships, biodiversity effects did not differ significantly between the full dataset of biodiversity experiments and the ecologically realistic subset of experimental communities. Although we do not provide direct evidence for strong or consistent biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships in real-world communities, our results demonstrate that the results of biodiversity experiments are largely insensitive to the exclusion of unrealistic communities and that the conclusions drawn from biodiversity experiments are generally robust.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41559-020-1280-9
DO - 10.1038/s41559-020-1280-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 32839545
AN - SCOPUS:85089742894
SN - 2397-334X
VL - 4
SP - 1485
EP - 1494
JO - Nature Ecology and Evolution
JF - Nature Ecology and Evolution
IS - 11
ER -