导读

生物多样性丧失有什么后果？过去30年，为了回答这个问题，生态学家开展了大量的生物多样性受控实验，结果发现植物物种多样性的丧失显著降低了群落生产力。然而，在野外的观测研究发现植物物种多样性对群落生产力的影响远小于受控实验。生物多样性受控实验和野外观测一个最大、但常被忽视的差异在于植物群落构建过程不同。受控实验常借助随机组装来构建植物群落，而环境过滤常导致野外观测到的植物群落不是随机构建的。Schmid et al.为了解决生物多样性受控实验结果与野外观测结果不一致的问题，通过去除随机组装群落中的从属物种，来模拟野外群落构建过程。结果发现随机组装植物群落中的实验过滤降低了物种丰富度，但增加了群落生物量。物种均匀度和互补的增加是从属种去除群落生产力增加主要的驱动因子。这些结果表明植物群落从属物种的存在是植物物种多样性对野外观测群落生产力的影响小于受控实验的主要原因。该工作为生物多样性-生态系统功能研究提供了新的机理解释，同时也为如何将生物多样性受控实验与野外观测研究联系起来提供了新的研究思路。

图表

Table 1. Ranking of plant species according to their removal probability p in the treatment triangles

Note:p corresponds to the fraction of plots in which a particular species occurred and in which it was removed because it belonged to the 50% of species with the lowest biomass in the plot. For nomenclature see Jäger & Werner (2002).

Figure 1：Average aboveground biomass of species as a function of dominance rank for communities of different species-richness levels: left column grouped according to preremoval richness, that is, comparing removal with control communities from which they were derived (from top-down 16, 8, 4, and 2 species), right column grouped according to postremoval richness, that is, comparing removal with control communities of the same richness (from top-down 8, 4, and 2 species). Blue circles and lines are for control communities, red circles and lines are for removal communities, and vertical black lines indicate ±1 standard error of means. D stands for dominant species that had not been removed and S for subordinate species that had been removed in removal communities. Note that “dominant” is used in a relative sense for species ranking in the first half of the “dominance” hierarchy; obviously, there is still a large variation among dominants with regard to biomass.Table 2. Analyses of variance for aboveground community biomass production, after the removal treatment, using (a) preremoval and (b) postremoval species richness as explanatory variables; (c) analysis of variance for evenness of aboveground biomass distribution among species, after the removal treatment, using postremoval species richness as an explanatory variable

Note:Treatment refers to species removal versus control. Block and species richness were tested against between-plot variation (plot), while treatment and the interaction were tested against within-plot variation (residual). Significant p values (p < 0.05) in boldface.
Abbreviations: Df, degrees of freedom; MS, mean squares.

Figure 2：Aboveground biomass (a) and evenness (b) of control and removal communities as a function of postremoval species richness. Blue crosses and blue regression lines are for control communities, red circles and red regression lines are for removal communities. For significances see Table 1. For evenness, monocultures are excluded because of undefined values.Table 3. Analyses of variance for (a) net, (b) complementarity, and (c) selection effects, after the removal treatment, using postremoval species richness as an explanatory variable

Note:Block and species richness were tested against between-plot variation (plot), while treatment and the interaction were tested against within-plot variation (residual). Significant p values (p < 0.05) in boldface.
Abbreviations: Df, degrees of freedom; MS, mean squares.

Figure 3：Net biodiversity effect (NE, a), complementarity effect (CE, b), and selection effect (SE, c) for control and removal communities as a function of postremoval species richness. Blue crosses and blue regression lines are for control communities, and red circles and regression lines are for removal communities. For significances see Table 2. Monocultures are excluded because of undefined values.

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原文链接：
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/glr2.12009

DOI：https://doi.org/10.1002/glr2.12009

内容来源：Grassland Research（草地研究）第1卷第1期（投稿：2022-03-17；接收：2022-03-31；刊发：2022-05-27）

引用格式：Schmid, B., Schmitz, M., Rzanny, M., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Mwangi, P. N., Weisser, W. W., Hector, A., Schmid, R., & Flynn, D. F. B. (2022). Removing subordinate species in a biodiversity experiment to mimic observational field studies. Grassland Research, 1(1), 53– 62.

文章信息编译者：井新 兰州大学草地农业科技学院 教授

说明：该文仅代表编译者对论文的理解，如需参考和引用相关内容，请查阅原文。

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