Sowing different mixtures in dry acidic grassland produced priority effects of varying strength |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0391, USA;2. Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Boulevard de l’Observatoire, Nice Cedex 4 06304, France;3. Bayerisches Geoinstitut, Universtat Bayreuth, Bayreuth D-95444, Germany;4. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Padova, Padova 35131, Italy;5. IFAC-CNR, Sesto Fiorentino, Firenze 50019, Italy;6. Department of Aerospace and Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0429, USA;1. Institute for Forest Resources and Environment of Guizhou, Key Laboratory of Forest Cultivation in Plateau Mountain of Guizhou Province, College of Forestry, Guizhou University, 550025 Guiyang, China;2. National Forestry and Grassland Administration Key Laboratory of Forest Resources Conservation and Ecological Safety on the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River, Sichuan Province Key Laboratory of Ecological Forestry Engineering on the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River, College of Forestry, Sichuan Agricultural University, 611130 Chengdu, China;3. CSIC, Unitat d''Ecologia Global CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Edifici C, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, 08193 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain;4. CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallès, 08193 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain;5. Nonlinear Analysis and Applied Mathematics (NAAM)-Research Group, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80257, Jeddah 21589. Saudi Arabia;6. Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland;7. Forestry and Wood Technology Discipline, Khulna University, 9208 Khulna, Bangladesh |
| |
| Abstract: | Several longer-term assembly studies on ex-arable land have found that species that arrive first at a disturbed site can play a key role in the further development of the community and that this priority effect influences aboveground productivity, species diversity and stability of the grassland communities that develop. Restoration of nutrient poor, species rich grasslands is often limited by seed dispersal as well as the accessibility of suitable microsites for establishment. Sowing species (i.e. creating priority effects for further assembly) may help overcome such dispersal barriers, but the potential of using priority effects for restoration has not been tested in this type of dry grassland. We tested the hypothesis that sowing two different seed mixtures used for dry acidic grassland restoration onto a sandy substrate (which formed an equivalent to a primary succession) would create priority effects, and that these priority effects would be sustained over a number of years. We followed community assembly and measured aboveground productivity for four years after sowing. We found that priority effects caused by sowing of differently diverse mixtures did also occur in dry acidic grassland habitat, but that how persistent they were over time depended on the response variable considered. Priority effects on species number were not as strong as found in previous ex-arable land studies, whereas priority effects for aboveground productivity were still visible after 4 years. In addition, functional composition of the community still reflected the composition of the seed mixtures 4 years later. Our results suggest that priority effects can occur in nutrient-poor dry acidic grassland but in contrast to more nutrient-rich sites the breadth of responses affected may not be as wide. |
| |
| Keywords: | Community assembly Biodiversity Restoration Filter theory Initial sowing Invasion Microsite limitation |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
