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Resource availability, species composition and sown density effects on productivity of experimental plant communities

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Abstract

Productivity of artificial grassland communities was investigated in a 6-year field experiment on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. In the experiment, assemblages varying in seven species compositions and four density gradients were grown in fertilized and non-fertilized subplots. We measured biomass of sown species as an indicator of community productivity. In general, 6-years of experiments indicated that: (i) species composition had a significant influence on community productivity. During the initial phase of the experiment, sown density significantly affected community productivity, but the effects disappear with the increase of grown years. This productivity increased with biodiversity increase and fertilization, while the biodiversity effects disappeared when the influence of composition was removed. (ii) The increase of community productivity with biodiversity was resulted from joint effects of selection and complementarity. (iii) With an increase of growth time, the selection effects become weaker while complementarities become enhanced. Influence of density on both effects was significantly different in early stages, but ultimately this all became insignificant. Fertilization dramatically increased the complementarity effects in all experiment processes, but had different influences on selection effects during different experimental period.

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Acknowledgements

We thank two referees for providing helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. We are also very appreciating Frederick Wu for assistance in editing of the manuscript. We thank Xianhui Zhou, Yang Wang, Wei Li, Menhe Gu and Gaolin Wu for providing invaluable field assistance. This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 40930533 to Guozhen Du and 31000198 to Kechang Niu).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MoE Key Laboratory of Arid and Grassland Ecology and School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Ang Li & Guozhen Du

  2. Department of Chemistry and Environment Science, Lanzhou City University, Lanzhou, 730070, China

    Ang Li

  3. Department of Biology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    Kechang Niu

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  1. Ang Li
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  2. Kechang Niu
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Correspondence to Guozhen Du.

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Responsible Editor: Hans Lambers.

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Li, A., Niu, K. & Du, G. Resource availability, species composition and sown density effects on productivity of experimental plant communities. Plant Soil 344, 177–186 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-011-0738-6

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