FOR 1451:  Exploring Mechanisms Underlying the Relationship between Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning

• Subject Area: Biology ; Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine
• Term: from 2010 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 163658437

We intend to investigate the mechanisms underlying the relationship between plant diversity and ecosystem processes based on the results of a long-term grassland biodiversity experiment that started in 2002. Sixty plant species, native and common to the Central European Arrhenatherum grasslands served as a species pool from which in the main experiment mixtures of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 60 plant species were assembled. The experiment yielded time-series data on a wide range of ecosystem processes, ranging from productivity, C-storage, and N-cycling to herbivory, pollination and decomposition.
For all plant species investigated, a large number of demographic, morphological and physiological variables were compiled and a phylogenetic tree was established. Based on these results, six approaches are proposed to understand why and how biodiversity affects particular ecosystem variables: (1) the sowing of a new trait-based experiment using a subset of the original plant species pool where species trait information is used to design plant communities and to predict species complementary, (2) the continuation of the data sets in the main experiment to study long-term dynamics and resilience of ecosystem variables, (3) tracer studies in the established plant communities to unravel belowground water and nitrogen partitioning among plant species, (4) an Ecotron experiment in a closed environment that includes the transfer of soil monoliths to the newly built ecotron facility in Montpellier, France, (5) an invasion experiment in the established communities and (6) a joint glasshouse experiment to measure species traits and interaction coefficients.
In order to explore how the mechanisms unravelled in the Jena Experiment drive ecosystem processes in natural and managed systems close relationships will be established with the biodiversity exploratories project focussing on managed grasslands in Germany, and the grassland management experiment of INRA Theix, France.
The present study is unique in comparison to other experiments of this type with respect to (1) the mechanistic investigation of species interactions, (2) the study of full element cycles of C, N and P and (3) the platform character of the experiment.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• International Connection: Austria, Canada, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, USA

Projects

• Above- and belowground plant complementarity (Applicants Mommer, Liesje ;  Weigelt, Alexandra )
• Aboveground plant-insect interaction webs and associated processes along a plant diversity gradient (Applicants Klein, Alexandra-Maria ;  Scherber, Christoph )
• Belowground Root Turnover and Root Traits (Applicants Mommer, Liesje ;  Weigelt, Alexandra )
• Biodiversity effects on seasonality, trends, and events in highly resolved long-term time series of the N and P cycles: a synthesis (Applicants Oelmann, Yvonne ;  Wilcke, Wolfgang )
• Consumer community structure and ecosystem functioning (Applicants Brose, Ulrich ;  Eisenhauer, Nico ;  Scherber, Christoph )
• Consumer community structure and stability (Applicants Ebeling, Anne ;  Hines, Ph.D., Jessica ;  Klein, Alexandra-Maria ;  Scheu, Stefan ;  Weisser, Wolfgang W. )
• Context-dependence of biodiversity effects and real-world perspective (Applicants Buchmann, Nina ;  Eisenhauer, Nico ;  Hillebrand, Helmut ;  Klein, Alexandra-Maria ;  Tscharntke, Teja ;  Weisser, Wolfgang W. )
• Coordination (Applicants Ebeling, Anne ;  Eisenhauer, Nico ;  Schmid, Bernhard ;  Trumbore, Susan )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Eisenhauer, Nico )
• Database and data publishing (Applicants König-Ries, Birgitta ;  Weisser, Wolfgang W. )
• Database and Synthesis (Applicant Weisser, Wolfgang W. )
• Diversity effects on plant life-cycle characteristics and population structure as a base for understanding community assembly and stability (Applicants Fischer, Markus ;  Roscher, Christiane )
• Intra-annual stability of spatial and temporal niche complementarity in temperate grasslands (Applicants Buchmann, Nina ;  Wirth, Christian )
• Linking biological drivers and water transport to understand biodiversity effects on C and N storage in soils (Applicants Gleixner, Gerd ;  Hildebrandt, Ph.D., Anke )
• Multiple mechanisms of species coexistence as a basis for biodiversity maintenance and ecosystem functioning (Applicants Fischer, Markus ;  Roscher, Christiane )
• Nitrogen and Phosphorus Cycling (Applicants Oelmann, Yvonne ;  Wilcke, Wolfgang )
• Plant - soil fauna interactions: soil feedback mechanisms in grassland of different diversity (Applicants Eisenhauer, Nico ;  Scheu, Stefan )
• Plant-Soil Feedback / Microbial Ecology: disentangling negative and positive soil feedback effects (Applicant de Deyn, Gerlinde B. )
• Soil organic matter storage as a function of plant biodiversity (Applicant Gleixner, Gerd )
• The interaction between plant functional diversity and soil hydrological conditions - an ecohydrological process model approach (Applicants Hildebrandt, Ph.D., Anke ;  Schröder-Esselbach, Boris )
• The productivity - stoichiometry - diversity concept in grasslands: disentangling intra- and interspecific variance in resource use (Applicant Hillebrand, Helmut )
• Time course of plant diversity effects on productivity, stability and assembly of communities and relation to plant-plant and plant-fungal leaf pathogen interactions (Applicants Fischer, Markus ;  Schmid, Bernhard )
• Trait-based modelling to explore processes underlying diversity-functioning relationships (Applicant Wirth, Christian )

• Partner Organisation: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Nico Eisenhauer