Artículos de revistas
Herbivores and nutrients control grassland plant diversity via light limitation
Fecha
2014-04Registro en:
Borer, Elizabeth; Seabloom, Eric; Gruner, Daniel; Harpole, Stanley; Hillebrand, Helmut; et al.; Herbivores and nutrients control grassland plant diversity via light limitation; Nature Publishing Group; Nature; 508; 7497; 4-2014; 517-520
0028-0836
CONICET Digital
CONICET
Autor
Borer, Elizabeth
Seabloom, Eric
Gruner, Daniel
Harpole, Stanley
Hillebrand, Helmut
Lind, Eric M.
Adler, Peter B.
Alberti, Juan
Anderson, Michael
Bakker, Jonathan D.
Biederman, Lori
Blumenthal, Dana
Brown, Cynthia S.
Brudvig, Lars A.
Buckley, Yvonne M.
Cadotte, Marc
Chu, Chengjin
Cleland, Elsa
Crawley, Michael
Daleo, Pedro
Damschen, Ellen
Davies, Kendi
DeCrappeo, Nicole
Du, Guozhen
Firn, Jennifer
Hautier, Yann
Heckman, Robert
Hector, Andy
Hillerislambers, Janneke
Iribarne, Oscar Osvaldo
Klein, Julia
Knops, Johannes M. H.
La Pierre, Kimberly
Leakey, Andrew D. B.
Li, Wei
MacDougall, Andrew S.
McCulley, Rebecca
Melbourne, Brett
Mitchell, Charles
Moore, Joslin
Mortensen, Brent
O'Halloran, Lydia
Orrock, John
Pascual, Jesus Maria
Prober, Suzanne
Pyke, David
Risch, Anita
Schuetz, Martin
Smith, Melinda D.
Stevens, Carly
Sullivan, Lauren
Williams, Ryan
Wragg, Peter
Yang, Louie
Resumen
Human alterations to nutrient cycles and herbivore communities are affecting global biodiversity dramatically. Ecological theory predicts these changes should be strongly counteractive: nutrient addition drives plant species loss through intensified competition for light, whereas herbivores prevent competitive exclusion by increasing ground-level light, particularly in productive systems. Here we use experimental data spanning a globally relevant range of conditions to test the hypothesis that herbaceous plant species losses caused by eutrophication may be offset by increased light availability due to herbivory. This experiment, replicated in 40 grasslands on 6 continents, demonstrates that nutrients and herbivores can serve as counteracting forces to control local plant diversity through light limitation, independent of site productivity, soil nitrogen, herbivore type and climate. Nutrient addition consistently reduced local diversity through light limitation, and herbivory rescued diversity at sites where it alleviated light limitation. Thus, species loss from anthropogenic eutrophication can be ameliorated in grasslands where herbivory increases ground-level light. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited.