Abstract
Species-rich plant communities can produce twice as much aboveground biomass as monocultures, but the mechanisms remain unresolved. We tested whether plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) can help explain these biodiversity-productivity relationships. Using a 16-species, factorial field experiment we found that plants created soils that changed subsequent plant growth by 27% and that this effect increased over time. When incorporated into simulation models, these PSFs improved predictions of plant community growth and explained 14% of overyielding. Here we show quantitative, field-based evidence that diversity maintains productivity by suppressing plant disease. Though this effect alone was modest, it helps constrain the role of factors, such as niche partitioning, that have been difficult to quantify. This improved understanding of biodiversity-productivity relationships has implications for agriculture, biofuel production and conservation.
Highlights
Species-rich plant communities can produce twice as much aboveground biomass as monocultures, but the mechanisms remain unresolved
The plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) experiment was performed, primarily, to produce plant growth rates on different soil training types to be used in plant-community simulation models, but we report PSF index values because they are a common metric that provide a simple summary of plant-soil interactions[29]
After a two-year training phase, plants created soils that changed subsequent plant growth by 27%
Summary
Species-rich plant communities can produce twice as much aboveground biomass as monocultures, but the mechanisms remain unresolved. Field-based evidence that diversity maintains productivity by suppressing plant disease Though this effect alone was modest, it helps constrain the role of factors, such as niche partitioning, that have been difficult to quantify. Species-specific soil mutualists can be expected to be more abundant and increase plant growth more in monocultures than species-rich communities resulting in underyielding[16,17]. It is near-impossible and likely inappropriate to individually characterize the effect of each species-specific soil pathogen and mutualist on plant productivity, it is possible to summarize the net effect of negative and positive plant-soil interactions using plant-soil feedback (i.e. PSF) experiments[18]. We are not aware of any two-phase, field experiments that have tested the effects of PSF in biodiversity-productivity relationships
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