The iDiv Ecotron-A flexible research platform for multitrophic biodiversity research.

Anja Schmidt,Manfred Türke,Martin Schädler,Sascha Reth,Jes Hines,Alban Gebler,Jacques Roy,Christian Wirth,François Buscot,Tao Liu,Nico Eisenhauer,Alexandra Weigelt,Stefan Klotz,Stefan Trogisch

doi:10.1002/ece3.8198

Abstract

Across the globe, ecological communities are confronted with multiple global environmental change drivers, and they are responding in complex ways ranging from behavioral, physiological, and morphological changes within populations to changes in community composition and food web structure with consequences for ecosystem functioning. A better understanding of global change‐induced alterations of multitrophic biodiversity and the ecosystem‐level responses in terrestrial ecosystems requires holistic and integrative experimental approaches to manipulate and study complex communities and processes above and below the ground. We argue that mesocosm experiments fill a critical gap in this context, especially when based on ecological theory and coupled with microcosm experiments, field experiments, and observational studies of macroecological patterns. We describe the design and specifications of a novel terrestrial mesocosm facility, the iDiv Ecotron. It was developed to allow the setup and maintenance of complex communities and the manipulation of several abiotic factors in a near‐natural way, while simultaneously measuring multiple ecosystem functions. To demonstrate the capabilities of the facility, we provide a case study. This study shows that changes in aboveground multitrophic interactions caused by decreased predator densities can have cascading effects on the composition of belowground communities. The iDiv Ecotrons technical features, which allow for the assembly of an endless spectrum of ecosystem components, create the opportunity for collaboration among researchers with an equally broad spectrum of expertise. In the last part, we outline some of such components that will be implemented in future ecological experiments to be realized in the iDiv Ecotron.

Highlights

Ecosystems are threatened by a multitude of environmental change drivers (Díaz et al, 2019; Maxwell et al, 2016; Murphy & Romanuk, 2014; Newbold et al, 2015; Pereira et al, 2012)
Across the globe, ecological communities are confronted with multiple global environmental change drivers, and they are responding in complex ways ranging from behavioral, physiological, and morphological changes within populations to changes in community composition and food web structure with consequences for ecosystem functioning
Bean dry weight was lowest in patches with B. perennis and H. lanatus, whereas it was significantly higher in C. jacea patches (Figure 4)

Summary

Introduction

Ecosystems are threatened by a multitude of environmental change drivers (Díaz et al, 2019; Maxwell et al, 2016; Murphy & Romanuk, 2014; Newbold et al, 2015; Pereira et al, 2012). To address our current knowledge gaps, we need experiments which can simultaneously manipulate and measure different global change drivers (Vanderkelen et al, 2020) and investigate their impacts on a wide range of functional groups and trophic levels of organisms (De Boeck et al, 2020; Komatsu et al, 2019; Korell et al, 2020) Combining such “meta-scale” studies with laboratory and field studies, especially large-scale climate change experiments (like Schädler et al, 2019), provides the opportunity to understand the complex patterns of biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships and their responses to environmental changes as well as the underlying processes that operate across organizational levels of life (cell-individual-population-community-ecosystem; Ferlian et al, 2018)

Methods

Results

Conclusion