Community diversity outweighs effect of warming on plant colonization.

Abiotic environmental change, local species extinctions and colonization of new species often co-occur. Whether species colonization is driven by changes in abiotic conditions or reduced biotic resistance will affect community functional composition and ecosystem management. We use a grassland experiment to disentangle effects of climate warming and community diversity on plant species colonization. Community diversity had dramatic impacts on the biomass, richness and traits of plant colonists. Three times as many species colonized the monocultures than the high diversity 17 species communities (~30 vs. 10 species), and colonists collectively produced 10 times as much biomass in the monocultures than the high diversity communities (~30 vs. 3 g/m2 ). Colonists with resource-acquisitive strategies (high specific leaf area, light seeds, short heights) accrued more biomass in low diversity communities, whereas species with conservative strategies accrued most biomass in high diversity communities. Communities with higher biomass of resident C4 grasses were more resistant to colonization by legume, nonlegume forb and C3 grass colonists, but not by C4 grass colonists. Compared with effects of diversity, 6 years of 3°C-above-ambient temperatures had little impact on plant colonization. Warmed subplots had ~3 fewer colonist species than ambient subplots and selected for heavier seeded colonists. They also showed diversity-dependent changes in biomass of C3 grass colonists, which decreased under low diversity and increased under high diversity. Our findings suggest that species colonization is more strongly affected by biotic resistance from residents than 3°C of climate warming. If these results were extended to invasive species management, preserving community diversity should help limit plant invasion, even under climate warming.

Shifting grassland plant community structure drives positive interactive effects of warming and diversity on aboveground net primary productivity.

Ecosystems worldwide are increasingly impacted by multiple drivers of environmental change, including climate warming and loss of biodiversity. We show, using a long-term factorial experiment, that plant diversity loss alters the effects of warming on productivity. Aboveground primary productivity was increased by both high plant diversity and warming, and, in concert, warming (≈1.5 °C average above and belowground warming over the growing season) and diversity caused a greater than additive increase in aboveground productivity. The aboveground warming effects increased over time, particularly at higher levels of diversity, perhaps because of warming-induced increases in legume and C4 bunch grass abundances, and facilitative feedbacks of these species on productivity. Moreover, higher plant diversity was associated with the amelioration of warming-induced environmental conditions. This led to cooler temperatures, decreased vapor pressure deficit, and increased surface soil moisture in higher diversity communities. Root biomass (0-30 cm) was likewise consistently greater at higher plant diversity and was greater with warming in monocultures and at intermediate diversity, but at high diversity warming had no detectable effect. This may be because warming increased the abundance of legumes, which have lower root : shoot ratios than the other types of plants. In addition, legumes increase soil nitrogen (N) supply, which could make N less limiting to other species and potentially decrease their investment in roots. The negative warming × diversity interaction on root mass led to an overall negative interactive effect of these two global change factors on the sum of above and belowground biomass, and thus likely on total plant carbon stores. In total, plant diversity increased the effect of warming on aboveground net productivity and moderated the effect on root mass. These divergent effects suggest that warming and changes in plant diversity are likely to have both interactive and divergent impacts on various aspects of ecosystem functioning.

Plant diversity effects on soil microbial functions and enzymes are stronger than warming in a grassland experiment.

Anthropogenic changes in biodiversity and atmospheric temperature significantly influence ecosystem processes. However, little is known about potential interactive effects of plant diversity and warming on essential ecosystem properties, such as soil microbial functions and element cycling. We studied the effects of orthogonal manipulations of plant diversity (one, four, and 16 species) and warming (ambient, +1.5 degrees C, and +3 degrees C) on soil microbial biomass, respiration, growth after nutrient additions, and activities of extracellular enzymes in 2011 and 2012 in the BAC (biodiversity and climate) perennial grassland experiment site at Cedar Creek, Minnesota, USA. Focal enzymes are involved in essential biogeochemical processes of the carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles. Soil microbial biomass and some enzyme activities involved in the C and N cycle increased significantly with increasing plant diversity in both years. In addition, 16-species mixtures buffered warming induced reductions in topsoil water content. We found no interactive effects of plant diversity and warming on soil microbial biomass and growth rates. However, the activity of several enzymes (1,4-beta-glucosidase, 1,4-beta-N-acetylglucosaminidase, phosphatase, peroxidase) depended on interactions between plant diversity and warming with elevated activities of enzymes involved in the C, N, and P cycles at both high plant diversity and high warming levels. Increasing plant diversity consistently decreased microbial biomass-specific enzyme activities and altered soil microbial growth responses to nutrient additions, indicating that plant diversity changed nutrient limitations and/or microbial community composition. In contrast to our expectations, higher plant diversity only buffered temperature effects on soil water content, but not on microbial functions. Temperature effects on some soil enzymes were greatest at high plant diversity. In total, our results suggest that the fundamental temperature ranges of soil microbial communities may be sufficiently broad to buffer their functioning against changes in temperature and that plant diversity may be a dominant control of soil microbial processes in a changing world.