Linking grassland plant diversity to species pools, sorting and plant traits

Journal of Ecology

Volumn 99, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 464-472

  Houseman, Gregory R ^a   Gross, Katherine L ^a  

^a MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Colonization; Diversity; Productivity; Seed addition; Species sorting; Species traits

Indexed keywords

COLONIZATION; GRASSLAND; GROWING SEASON; GROWTH RATE; PLANT COMMUNITY; SPECIES EVENNESS; SPECIES POOL; SPECIES RICHNESS; WATER USE;

EID: 79951642371     PISSN: 00220477     EISSN: 13652745     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2010.01786.x     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. Ackerly, D.D. & Cornwell, W.K. (2007) A trait-based approach to community assembly: partitioning of species trait values into within- and among-community components. Ecology Letters, 10, 135-145.
2. Adler, P.B., HilleRisLambers, J. & Levine, J.M. (2007) A niche for neutrality. Ecology Letters, 10, 95-104.
3. Bell, G. (2005) The co-distribution of species in relation to the neutral theory of community ecology. Ecology, 86, 1757-1770.
4. Belyea, L.R. & Lancaster, J. (1999) Assembly rules within a contingent ecology. Oikos, 86, 402-416.
5. Cornelissen, J.H.C., Lavorel, S., Garnier, E., Diaz, S., Buchmann, N., Gurvich, D.E., Reich, P.B., ter Steege, H., Morgan, H.D., van der Heijden, M.G.A., Pausas, J.G. & Poorter, H. (2003) A handbook of protocols for standardised and easy measurement of plant functional traits worldwide. Australian Journal of Botany, 51, 335-380.
6. Cornell, H.V. & Lawton, J.H. (1992) Species interactions, local and regional processes, and limits to the richness of ecological communities: a theoretical perspective. Journal of Animal Ecology, 61, 1-12.
7. Diaz, S., Cabido, M. & Casanoves, F. (1998) Plant functional traits and environmental filters at a regional scale. Journal of Vegetation Science, 9, 113-122.
8. Dufrene, M. & Legendre, P. (1997) Species assemblages and indicator species: the need for a flexible asymmetrical approach. Ecological Monographs, 67, 345-366.
9. Emery, S.M. & Gross, K.L. (2006) Dominant species identity regulates invasibility of old-field plant communities. Oikos, 115, 549-558.
10. Eriksson, O. & Jakobsson, A. (1998) Abundance, distribution and life histories of grassland plants: a comparative study of 81 species. Journal of Ecology, 86, 922-933.
11. Fargione, J., Brown, C.S. & Tilman, D. (2003) Community assembly and invasion: an experimental test of neutral versus niche processes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100, 8916-8920.
12. Foster, B.L. (2001) Constraints on colonization and species richness along a grassland productivity gradient: the role of propagule availability. Ecology Letters, 4, 530-535.
13. Foster, B.L. & Dickson, T.L. (2004) Grassland diversity and productivity: the interplay of resource availability and propagule pools. Ecology, 85, 1541-1547.
14. Foster, B.L., Dickson, T.L., Murphy, C.A., Karel, I.S. & Smith, V.H. (2004) Propagule pools mediate community assembly and diversity-ecosystem regulation along a grassland productivity gradient. Journal of Ecology, 92, 435-449.
15. Gleeson, S.K. & Tilman, D. (1994) Plant allocation, growth-rate and succession status. Functional Ecology, 8, 543-550.
16. Grace, J.B. (1999) The factors controlling species density in herbaceous plant communities. Perspectives in Plant Ecology Evolution and Systematics, 2, 1-28.
17. Grime, J.P. (1977) Evidence for existence of 3 primary strategies in plants and its relevance to ecological and evolutionary theory. American Naturalist, 111, 1169-1194.
18. Grime, J.P. (1979) Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes. John Wiley, New York, NY.
19. Harpole, W.S. & Tilman, D. (2006) Non-neutral patterns of species abundance in grassland communities. Ecology Letters, 9, 15-23.
20. Houseman, G.R. (2004) Local and regional effects on plant diversity: the influence of species pools, colonizer traits and productivity. Dissertation, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.
21. Houseman, G.R. & Gross, K.L. (2006) Does ecological filtering across a productivity gradient explain variation in species pool-richness relationships? Oikos, 115, 148-154.
22. Houseman, G.R., Mittelbach, G.G., Reynolds, H.L. & Gross, K.L. (2008) Perturbations alter community convergence, divergence, and formation of multiple community states. Ecology, 89, 2172-2180.
23. Hubbell, S.P. (2001) The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
24. Huston, M.A. (1999) Local processes and regional patterns: appropriate scales for understanding variation in the diversity of plants and animals. Oikos, 86, 393-401.
25. Inouye, R.S. & Tilman, D. (1988) Convergence and divergence of old-field plant-communities along experimental nitrogen gradients. Ecology, 69, 995-1004.
26. Keddy, P.A. (1992) Assembly and response rules: 2 goals for predictive community ecology. Journal of Vegetation Science, 3, 157-164.
27. Lambers, H., Chapin, F.S & Pons, T.L. (1998) Plant Physiological Ecology. Springer, New York.
28. Latham, R.E. (1992) Cooccurring tree species change rank in seedling performance with resources varied experimentally. Ecology, 73, 2129-2144.
29. Lavorel, S. & Garnier, E. (2002) Predicting changes in community composition and ecosystem functioning from plant traits: revisiting the Holy Grail. Functional Ecology, 16, 545-556.
30. Lavorel, S., McIntyre, S., Landsberg, J. & Forbes, T.D.A. (1997) Plant functional classifications: from general groups to specific groups based on response to disturbance. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 12, 474-478.
31. Legendre, P., Galzin, R. & HarmelinVivien, M.L. (1997) Relating behavior to habitat: solutions to the fourth-corner problem. Ecology, 78, 547-562.
32. Leibold, M.A., Holyoak, M., Mouquet, N., Amarasekare, P., Chase, J.M., Hoopes, M.F., Holt, R.D., Shurin, J.B., Law, R., Tilman, D., Loreau, M. & Gonzalez, A. (2004) The metacommunity concept: a framework for multi-scale community ecology. Ecology Letters, 7, 601-613.
33. Lloret, F., Medail, F., Brundu, G., Camarda, I., Moragues, E., Rita, J., Lambdon, P. & Hulme, P.E. (2005) Species attributes and invasion success by alien plants on Mediterranean islands. Journal of Ecology, 93, 512-520.
34. McCune, B. & Grace, J.B. (2002) Analysis of Ecological Communities. MjM Software Design, Gleneden Beach, OR.
35. Mitchell-Olds, T. & Shaw, R.G. (1987) Regression-analysis of natural-selection: statistical-inference and biological interpretation. Evolution, 41, 1149-1161.
36. Ozinga, W.A., Bekker, R.M., Schaminee, J.H.J. & Van Groenendael, J.M. (2004) Dispersal potential in plant communities depends on environmental conditions. Journal of Ecology, 92, 767-777.
37. Pakeman, R.J. (2004) Consistency of plant species and trait responses to grazing along a productivity gradient: a multi-site analysis. Journal of Ecology, 92, 893-905.
38. Partel, M. & Zobel, M. (2007) Dispersal limitation may result in the unimodal productivity-diversity relationship: a new explanation for a general pattern. Journal of Ecology, 95, 90-94.
39. van der Putten, W.H., Bardgett, R.D., de Ruiter, P.C., Hol, W.H.G., Meyer, K.M., Bezemer, T.M. et al. (2009) Empirical and theoretical challenges in aboveground-belowground ecology. Oecologia, 161, 1-14.
40. Reader, R.J. (1998) Relationship between species relative abundance and plant traits for an infertile habitat. Plant Ecology, 134, 43-51.
41. Ricklefs, R.E. (1987) Community diversity: relative roles of local and regional processes. Science, 235, 167-171.
42. Robertson, G.P., Coleman, D.C., Bledsoe, C.S., & Sollins, P. (1999) Standard Soil Methods for Long-term Ecological Research. Oxford University Press, New York.
43. Snyman, H.A. (2009) Root studies on grass species in a semi-arid South Africa along a soil-water gradient. Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment, 131, 247-254.
44. Stevens, M.H.H., Bunker, D.E., Schnitzer, S.A. & Carson, W.P. (2004) Establishment limitation reduces species recruitment and species richness as soil resources rise. Journal of Ecology, 92, 339-347.
45. Tilman, D. (1997) Community invasibility, recruitment limitation, and grassland biodiversity. Ecology, 78, 81-92.
46. Tilman, D. (2004) Niche tradeoffs, neutrality, and community structure: a stochastic theory of resource competition, invasion, and community assembly. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101, 10854-10861.
47. Turnbull, L.A., Crawley, M.J. & Rees, M. (2000) Are plant populations seed-limited? A review of seed sowing experiments. Oikos, 88, 225-238.
48. Weiher, E., Clarke, G.D.P. & Keddy, P.A. (1998) Community assembly rules, morphological dispersion, and the coexistence of plant species. Oikos, 81, 309-322.
49. Weiher, E., van der Werf, A., Thompson, K., Roderick, M., Garnier, E. & Eriksson, O. (1999) Challenging Theophrastus: a common core list of plant traits for functional ecology. Journal of Vegetation Science, 10, 609-620.
50. Whittaker, R.H. (1967) Gradient analysis of vegetation. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 42, 207-264.
51. Williams, N.S.G., Morgan, J.W., McDonnell, M.J. & McCarthy, M.A. (2005) Plant traits and local extinctions in natural grasslands along an urban-rural gradient. Journal of Ecology, 93, 1203-1213.
52. Zhou, X.H., Talley, M. & Luo, Y.Q. (2009) Biomass, litter, and soil respiration along a precipitation gradient in Southern Great Plains, USA. Ecosystems, 12, 1369-1380.
53. Zobel, M. (1997) The relative role of species pools in determining plant species richness. An alternative explanation of species coexistence? Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 12, 266-269.
54. Zobel, M. & Partel, M. (2008) What determines the relationship between plant diversity and habitat productivity? Global Ecology and Biogeography, 17, 679-684.
55. Zobel, M., Otsus, M., Liira, J., Moora, M. & Mols, T. (2000) Is small-scale species richness limited by seed availability or microsite availability? Ecology, 81, 3274-3282.