Resource fluctuations and niche separation in plant communities: Can land-use effects on soil moisture explain observed patterns in plant diversity?

植物群落的资源波动和生态位分离：土地利用对土壤湿度的影响能否解释观察到的植物多样性模式？

• 批准号: 193242744
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Carsten Dormann
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Geowissenschaften
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2010-12-31 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/193242744?language=en
• 关键词: Resource; fluctuations; niche; separation; plant

Plant diversity in grassland systems has been hypothesised Silvertown et al. (1999 Nature) to be related to the plant species' tolerance to drought and water saturated soil, respectively. They argue that drought-tolerant species are particularly sensitive to water-logged soils and vice versa, yielding a drought-water logging-trade off that explains plant diversity. This hydro-ecological hypothesis has as such not been tested independently or experimentally. Here, we propose to use the unique data collected within the Biodiversity Exploratories to test the hydro-ecological hypothesis. Furthermore, we propose to investigate the effect of land use and soil type on hydrological conditions and to test alternative explanations for the hydrological effect (particularly related to soil chemistry). Also, we propose to carry out two manipulative experiments in mesocosms to test the causal link between fluctuating soil moisture and plant diversity, and to disentangle the contribution of nutrient availability and soil moisture. Finally, we propose a pilot study to transfer the hydro-ecological hypothesis to the forest understorey. Here adaptation to shade may trade-off against physiological tolerance of light spots and thus forest floor plant diversity may be similarly explained by differential adaptation to fluctuating resource conditions.

Silvertown等人已经假设草地系统中的植物多样性。 （1999年），分别与植物物种对干旱和水饱和土壤的耐受性有关。他们认为，耐旱的物种对水土壤特别敏感，反之亦然，从而产生了解释植物多样性的干旱伐木贸易。这种水力生态假设尚未独立或实验测试。在这里，我们建议使用在生物多样性探索者中收集的独特数据来检验水力生态假设。此外，我们建议研究土地利用和土壤类型对水文条件的影响，并测试用于水文效应的替代解释（尤其是与土壤化学有关）。另外，我们建议在中峰进行两个操纵实验，以测试波动的土壤水分和植物多样性之间的因果关系，并消除营养可用性和土壤水分的贡献。最后，我们提出了一项试点研究，将水力生态假设转移到植物的森林。在这里，适应阴影可能可以权衡反对光斑的生理耐受性，因此，可以通过差异化适应资源条件来解释森林地板植物的多样性。