Abstract
Background: Can high diversity mixtures of later succession plant species be able to suppress early successional (arable weed) species than low diversity species mixtures? Can the removal of plant functional groups have important consequences on the sys-tem stability? Location: The study area was located at 850 m a.s.l., fifteen kilometers (15 km) to the west of Salamanca city, Spain, in a dehesa-like woodland. Methods: The field experiment was installed in Spring 1996 (May). The plots represented former agricultural lands cropped with (a rotation of) monocultures and abandoned right at the beginning of the experiment after the last crop was harvested in 1995. Before in-stalling plots, the fields were harrowed and equalized. The treatments (NC-natural colonization, LD-low diversity seed mixture and HD-high diversity seed mixture) were randomly allocated to the plots in each block. The experiment was organised accord-ing to a block design with five replicate blocks. Within each block, four plots measur-ing 10 × 10 m were marked out and each of the three treatments was randomly as-signed to one plot. All plots were separated by 2 m walkways. Results: The competitive ability of the sown species in different mixtures in LD, valued on the basis of their performance in HD, is a good predictor of their ability to suppress the weed crops spe-cies. This was also corroborated by the high relationship between the efficiency of the sown species in both treatments of species mixture (R2 = 0.51, F (1, 33) = 34.56, P
Highlights
In the debate of threats to biological diversity and ecosystem functioning, land use change has been identified as one of the most immediate causes [1] [2] [3] [4]
The increase of colonizing species cover was significantly lower in low diversity (LD), which again supported the increase of biomass in 1998, being lower in high diversity (HD)
The present study focuses on the suppression of early-successional species by more or less diverse species mixtures of later-successional plant species
Summary
In the debate of threats to biological diversity and ecosystem functioning, land use change has been identified as one of the most immediate causes [1] [2] [3] [4]. Can high diversity mixtures of later succession plant species be able to suppress early successional (arable weed) species than low diversity species mixtures? The treatments (NC-natural colonization, LD-low diversity seed mixture and HD-high diversity seed mixture) were randomly allocated to the plots in each block. Results: The competitive ability of the sown species in different mixtures in LD, valued on the basis of their performance in HD, is a good predictor of their ability to suppress the weed crops species This was corroborated by the high relationship between the efficiency of the sown species in both treatments of species mixture (R2 = 0.51, F (1, 33) = 34.56, P < 0.001). Conclusions: The increase of colonizing species cover was significantly lower in LD, which again supported the increase of biomass in 1998, being lower in HD This increase in the community is more prominent in LD treatments. The effect of sown species was not so important in this increase
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