Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands

1. Dominance often indicates one or a few species being best suited for resource capture and retention in a given environment. Press perturbations that change availability of limiting resources can restructure competitive hierarchies, allowing new species to capture or retain resources and leaving o...

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Main Authors: Wilfahrt, Peter A., Seabloom, Eric William, Bakker, Jonathan D., Biederman, Lori A., Bugalho, Miguel N., Cadotte, Marc W., Caldeira, Maria C., Catford, Jane A., Chen, Qingqing, Donohue, Ian, Peri, Pablo Luis, Borer, Elizabeth T.
Format: Artículo
Language:Inglés
Published: British Ecological Society 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12123/16398
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2745.14198
https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14198
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author Wilfahrt, Peter A.
Seabloom, Eric William
Bakker, Jonathan D.
Biederman, Lori A.
Bugalho, Miguel N.
Cadotte, Marc W.
Caldeira, Maria C.
Catford, Jane A.
Chen, Qingqing
Donohue, Ian
Peri, Pablo Luis
Borer, Elizabeth T.
author_browse Bakker, Jonathan D.
Biederman, Lori A.
Borer, Elizabeth T.
Bugalho, Miguel N.
Cadotte, Marc W.
Caldeira, Maria C.
Catford, Jane A.
Chen, Qingqing
Donohue, Ian
Peri, Pablo Luis
Seabloom, Eric William
Wilfahrt, Peter A.
author_facet Wilfahrt, Peter A.
Seabloom, Eric William
Bakker, Jonathan D.
Biederman, Lori A.
Bugalho, Miguel N.
Cadotte, Marc W.
Caldeira, Maria C.
Catford, Jane A.
Chen, Qingqing
Donohue, Ian
Peri, Pablo Luis
Borer, Elizabeth T.
author_sort Wilfahrt, Peter A.
collection INTA Digital
description 1. Dominance often indicates one or a few species being best suited for resource capture and retention in a given environment. Press perturbations that change availability of limiting resources can restructure competitive hierarchies, allowing new species to capture or retain resources and leaving once dominant species fated to decline. However, dominant species may maintain high abundances even when their new environments no longer favour them due to stochastic processes associated with their high abundance, impeding deterministic processes that would otherwise diminish them. 2. Here, we quantify the persistence of dominance by tracking the rate of decline in dominant species at 90 globally distributed grassland sites under experimentally elevated soil nutrient supply and reduced vertebrate consumer pressure. 3. We found that chronic experimental nutrient addition and vertebrate exclusion caused certain subsets of species to lose dominance more quickly than in control plots. In control plots, perennial species and species with high initial cover maintained dominance for longer than annual species and those with low initial cover respectively. In fertilized plots, species with high initial cover maintained dominance at similar rates to control plots, while those with lower initial cover lost dominance even faster than similar species in controls. High initial cover increased the estimated time to dominance loss more strongly in plots with vertebrate exclosures than in controls. Vertebrate exclosures caused a slight decrease in the persistence of dominance for perennials, while fertilization brought perennials' rate of dominance loss in line with those of annuals. Annual species lost dominance at similar rates regardless of treatments. 4. Synthesis. Collectively, these results point to a strong role of a species' historical abundance in maintaining dominance following environmental perturbations. Because dominant species play an outsized role in driving ecosystem processes, their ability to remain dominant—regardless of environmental conditions—is critical to anticipating expected rates of change in the structure and function of grasslands. Species that maintain dominance while no longer competitively favoured following press perturbations due to their historical abundances may result in community compositions that do not maximize resource capture, a key process of system responses to global change.
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spelling INTA163982023-12-29T11:41:36Z Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands Wilfahrt, Peter A. Seabloom, Eric William Bakker, Jonathan D. Biederman, Lori A. Bugalho, Miguel N. Cadotte, Marc W. Caldeira, Maria C. Catford, Jane A. Chen, Qingqing Donohue, Ian Peri, Pablo Luis Borer, Elizabeth T. Plant Communities Species Diversity Fertilizer Application Grasslands Comunidades Vegetales Diversidad de Especies Aplicación de Abonos Praderas Dominance Global Change Ecology Plant– herbivore Interactions Dominancia Cambio Ecológico Global Interacciones Planta-herbívoro 1. Dominance often indicates one or a few species being best suited for resource capture and retention in a given environment. Press perturbations that change availability of limiting resources can restructure competitive hierarchies, allowing new species to capture or retain resources and leaving once dominant species fated to decline. However, dominant species may maintain high abundances even when their new environments no longer favour them due to stochastic processes associated with their high abundance, impeding deterministic processes that would otherwise diminish them. 2. Here, we quantify the persistence of dominance by tracking the rate of decline in dominant species at 90 globally distributed grassland sites under experimentally elevated soil nutrient supply and reduced vertebrate consumer pressure. 3. We found that chronic experimental nutrient addition and vertebrate exclusion caused certain subsets of species to lose dominance more quickly than in control plots. In control plots, perennial species and species with high initial cover maintained dominance for longer than annual species and those with low initial cover respectively. In fertilized plots, species with high initial cover maintained dominance at similar rates to control plots, while those with lower initial cover lost dominance even faster than similar species in controls. High initial cover increased the estimated time to dominance loss more strongly in plots with vertebrate exclosures than in controls. Vertebrate exclosures caused a slight decrease in the persistence of dominance for perennials, while fertilization brought perennials' rate of dominance loss in line with those of annuals. Annual species lost dominance at similar rates regardless of treatments. 4. Synthesis. Collectively, these results point to a strong role of a species' historical abundance in maintaining dominance following environmental perturbations. Because dominant species play an outsized role in driving ecosystem processes, their ability to remain dominant—regardless of environmental conditions—is critical to anticipating expected rates of change in the structure and function of grasslands. Species that maintain dominance while no longer competitively favoured following press perturbations due to their historical abundances may result in community compositions that do not maximize resource capture, a key process of system responses to global change. EEA Santa Cruz Fil: Wilfahrt, Peter A. University of Minnesota. Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior; Estados Unidos Fil: Seabloom, Eric William. University of Minnesota. Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior; Estados Unidos Fil: Bakker, Jonathan D. University of Washington. School of Environmental and Forest Sciences; Estados Unidos. Fil: Biederman, Lori A. Iowa State University. Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology; Estados Unidos Fil: Bugalho, Miguel N. University of Lisbon. Centre for Applied Ecology “Prof. Baeta Neves” (CEABN-InBIO). School of Agriculture; Portugal. Fil: Cadotte, Marc W. University of Toronto Scarborough. Department of Biological Sciences; Canadá. Fil: Caldeira, Maria C. University of Lisbon. Forest Research Centre. School of Agriculture; Portugal. Fil: Catford, Jane A. King’s College London. Department of Geography; Reino Unido Fil: Catford, Jane A. University of Melbourne. School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences; Australia. Fil: Chen, Qingqing. Peking University. College of Urban and Environmental Science; China. Fil: Chen, Qingqing. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). Halle-Jena-Leipzig; Alemania Fil: Donohue, Ian. Trinity College Dublin. School of Natural Sciences. Department of Zoology; Irlanda Fil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Santa Cruz; Argentina. Fil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral.; Argentina. Fil: Peri, Pablo Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Fil: Borer, Elizabeth T. University of Minnesota. Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior; Estados Unidos 2023-12-29T11:31:35Z 2023-12-29T11:31:35Z 2023-11 info:ar-repo/semantics/artículo info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12123/16398 https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2745.14198 Wilfahrt P.A.; Seabloom E.W.; Bakker J.D.; Biederman L.; Bugalho M.N.; Cadotte M.W.; Caldeira M.C.; Catford J.A.; Chen Q.; Donohue I.; Ebeling A.; Eisenhauer N.; Haider S.; Heckman R.W.; Jentsch A.; Koerner S.E.; Komatsu K.; Laungani R.; Macdougall A; Martina J.P.; (…); Peri P.L.; et al… … Borer, E. T. (2023) Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands. Journal of Ecology 111: 2472-2482. http://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14198 1365-2745 0022-0477 https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14198 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) application/pdf British Ecological Society Journal of Ecology 111 (11) : 2472-2482. (November 2023)
spellingShingle Plant Communities
Species Diversity
Fertilizer Application
Grasslands
Comunidades Vegetales
Diversidad de Especies
Aplicación de Abonos
Praderas
Dominance
Global Change Ecology
Plant– herbivore Interactions
Dominancia
Cambio Ecológico Global
Interacciones Planta-herbívoro
Wilfahrt, Peter A.
Seabloom, Eric William
Bakker, Jonathan D.
Biederman, Lori A.
Bugalho, Miguel N.
Cadotte, Marc W.
Caldeira, Maria C.
Catford, Jane A.
Chen, Qingqing
Donohue, Ian
Peri, Pablo Luis
Borer, Elizabeth T.
Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands
title Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands
title_full Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands
title_fullStr Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands
title_full_unstemmed Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands
title_short Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands
title_sort nothing lasts forever dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands
topic Plant Communities
Species Diversity
Fertilizer Application
Grasslands
Comunidades Vegetales
Diversidad de Especies
Aplicación de Abonos
Praderas
Dominance
Global Change Ecology
Plant– herbivore Interactions
Dominancia
Cambio Ecológico Global
Interacciones Planta-herbívoro
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12123/16398
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2745.14198
https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14198
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