Biodiversity Effects on Plant Stoichiometry

In the course of the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning debate, the issue of multifunctionality of species communities has recently become a major focus. Elemental stoichiometry is related to a variety of processes reflecting multiple plant responses to the biotic and abiotic environment. It can thu...

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Main Authors:	Abbas, Maike, Ebeling, Anne, Oelmann, Yvonne, Ptacnik, Robert, Roscher, Christiane, Weigelt, Alexandra, Weisser, Wolfgang W., Wilcke, Wolfgang, Hillebrand, Helmut
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2013
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3587429/

id	pubmed-3587429
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-35874292013-03-12 Biodiversity Effects on Plant Stoichiometry Abbas, Maike Ebeling, Anne Oelmann, Yvonne Ptacnik, Robert Roscher, Christiane Weigelt, Alexandra Weisser, Wolfgang W. Wilcke, Wolfgang Hillebrand, Helmut Research Article In the course of the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning debate, the issue of multifunctionality of species communities has recently become a major focus. Elemental stoichiometry is related to a variety of processes reflecting multiple plant responses to the biotic and abiotic environment. It can thus be expected that the diversity of a plant assemblage alters community level plant tissue chemistry. We explored elemental stoichiometry in aboveground plant tissue (ratios of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) and its relationship to plant diversity in a 5-year study in a large grassland biodiversity experiment (Jena Experiment). Species richness and functional group richness affected community stoichiometry, especially by increasing C:P and N:P ratios. The primacy of either species or functional group richness effects depended on the sequence of testing these terms, indicating that both aspects of richness were congruent and complementary to expected strong effects of legume presence and grass presence on plant chemical composition. Legumes and grasses had antagonistic effects on C:N (−27.7% in the presence of legumes, +32.7% in the presence of grasses). In addition to diversity effects on mean ratios, higher species richness consistently decreased the variance of chemical composition for all elemental ratios. The diversity effects on plant stoichiometry has several non-exclusive explanations: The reduction in variance can reflect a statistical averaging effect of species with different chemical composition or a optimization of nutrient uptake at high diversity, leading to converging ratios at high diversity. The shifts in mean ratios potentially reflect higher allocation to stem tissue as plants grew taller at higher richness. By showing a first link between plant diversity and stoichiometry in a multiyear experiment, our results indicate that losing plant species from grassland ecosystems will lead to less reliable chemical composition of forage for herbivorous consumers and belowground litter input. Public Library of Science 2013-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC3587429/ /pubmed/23483990 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058179 Text en © 2013 Abbas et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Abbas, Maike Ebeling, Anne Oelmann, Yvonne Ptacnik, Robert Roscher, Christiane Weigelt, Alexandra Weisser, Wolfgang W. Wilcke, Wolfgang Hillebrand, Helmut
spellingShingle	Abbas, Maike Ebeling, Anne Oelmann, Yvonne Ptacnik, Robert Roscher, Christiane Weigelt, Alexandra Weisser, Wolfgang W. Wilcke, Wolfgang Hillebrand, Helmut Biodiversity Effects on Plant Stoichiometry
author_facet	Abbas, Maike Ebeling, Anne Oelmann, Yvonne Ptacnik, Robert Roscher, Christiane Weigelt, Alexandra Weisser, Wolfgang W. Wilcke, Wolfgang Hillebrand, Helmut
author_sort	Abbas, Maike
title	Biodiversity Effects on Plant Stoichiometry
title_short	Biodiversity Effects on Plant Stoichiometry
title_full	Biodiversity Effects on Plant Stoichiometry
title_fullStr	Biodiversity Effects on Plant Stoichiometry
title_full_unstemmed	Biodiversity Effects on Plant Stoichiometry
title_sort	biodiversity effects on plant stoichiometry
description	In the course of the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning debate, the issue of multifunctionality of species communities has recently become a major focus. Elemental stoichiometry is related to a variety of processes reflecting multiple plant responses to the biotic and abiotic environment. It can thus be expected that the diversity of a plant assemblage alters community level plant tissue chemistry. We explored elemental stoichiometry in aboveground plant tissue (ratios of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) and its relationship to plant diversity in a 5-year study in a large grassland biodiversity experiment (Jena Experiment). Species richness and functional group richness affected community stoichiometry, especially by increasing C:P and N:P ratios. The primacy of either species or functional group richness effects depended on the sequence of testing these terms, indicating that both aspects of richness were congruent and complementary to expected strong effects of legume presence and grass presence on plant chemical composition. Legumes and grasses had antagonistic effects on C:N (−27.7% in the presence of legumes, +32.7% in the presence of grasses). In addition to diversity effects on mean ratios, higher species richness consistently decreased the variance of chemical composition for all elemental ratios. The diversity effects on plant stoichiometry has several non-exclusive explanations: The reduction in variance can reflect a statistical averaging effect of species with different chemical composition or a optimization of nutrient uptake at high diversity, leading to converging ratios at high diversity. The shifts in mean ratios potentially reflect higher allocation to stem tissue as plants grew taller at higher richness. By showing a first link between plant diversity and stoichiometry in a multiyear experiment, our results indicate that losing plant species from grassland ecosystems will lead to less reliable chemical composition of forage for herbivorous consumers and belowground litter input.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2013
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3587429/
_version_	1611959159472783360

Biodiversity Effects on Plant Stoichiometry

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