ORCID Profile
0000-0001-6403-7513
Current Organisation
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-10-2023
DOI: 10.1111/GCB.16950
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-10-2018
DOI: 10.1111/GCB.14442
Abstract: The responses of species to environmental changes will determine future community composition and ecosystem function. Many syntheses of global change experiments examine the magnitude of treatment effect sizes, but we lack an understanding of how plant responses to treatments compare to ongoing changes in the unmanipulated (ambient or background) system. We used a database of long-term global change studies manipulating CO
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-09-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 19-10-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 29-10-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41559-018-0696-Y
Abstract: Herbivores alter plant bio ersity (species richness) in many of the world's ecosystems, but the magnitude and the direction of herbivore effects on bio ersity vary widely within and among ecosystems. One current theory predicts that herbivores enhance plant bio ersity at high productivity but have the opposite effect at low productivity. Yet, empirical support for the importance of site productivity as a mediator of these herbivore impacts is equivocal. Here, we synthesize data from 252 large-herbivore exclusion studies, spanning a 20-fold range in site productivity, to test an alternative hypothesis-that herbivore-induced changes in the competitive environment determine the response of plant bio ersity to herbivory irrespective of productivity. Under this hypothesis, when herbivores reduce the abundance (biomass, cover) of dominant species (for ex le, because the dominant plant is palatable), additional resources become available to support new species, thereby increasing bio ersity. By contrast, if herbivores promote high dominance by increasing the abundance of herbivory-resistant, unpalatable species, then resource availability for other species decreases reducing bio ersity. We show that herbivore-induced change in dominance, independent of site productivity or precipitation (a proxy for productivity), is the best predictor of herbivore effects on bio ersity in grassland and savannah sites. Given that most herbaceous ecosystems are dominated by one or a few species, altering the competitive environment via herbivores or by other means may be an effective strategy for conserving bio ersity in grasslands and savannahs globally.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 19-08-2019
Abstract: Accurate prediction of community responses to global change drivers (GCDs) is critical given the effects of bio ersity on ecosystem services. There is consensus that human activities are driving species extinctions at the global scale, but debate remains over whether GCDs are systematically altering local communities worldwide. Across 105 experiments that included over 400 experimental manipulations, we found evidence for a lagged response of herbaceous plant communities to GCDs caused by shifts in the identities and relative abundances of species, often without a corresponding difference in species richness. These results provide evidence that community responses are pervasive across a wide variety of GCDs on long-term temporal scales and that these responses increase in strength when multiple GCDs are simultaneously imposed.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-01-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-021-20997-9
Abstract: A Correction to this paper has been published: 0.1038/s41467-021-20997-9.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-10-2020
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-020-19252-4
Abstract: Eutrophication is a widespread environmental change that usually reduces the stabilizing effect of plant ersity on productivity in local communities. Whether this effect is scale dependent remains to be elucidated. Here, we determine the relationship between plant ersity and temporal stability of productivity for 243 plant communities from 42 grasslands across the globe and quantify the effect of chronic fertilization on these relationships. Unfertilized local communities with more plant species exhibit greater asynchronous dynamics among species in response to natural environmental fluctuations, resulting in greater local stability (alpha stability). Moreover, neighborhood communities that have greater spatial variation in plant species composition within sites (higher beta ersity) have greater spatial asynchrony of productivity among communities, resulting in greater stability at the larger scale (gamma stability). Importantly, fertilization consistently weakens the contribution of plant ersity to both of these stabilizing mechanisms, thus diminishing the positive effect of bio ersity on stability at differing spatial scales. Our findings suggest that preserving grassland functional stability requires conservation of plant ersity within and among ecological communities.
Location: United States of America
No related grants have been discovered for Sally Koerner.