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Plant organic N uptake maintains species dominance under long-term warming

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Abstract

Background and aims

There is ample experimental evidence for shifts in plant community composition under climate warming. To date, however, the underlying mechanisms driving these compositional shifts remain poorly understood.

Methods

The amount and form of nitrogen (N) available to plants are among the primary factors limiting productivity and plant coexistence in terrestrial ecosystems. We conducted a short-term 15N tracer experiment in a ten-year warming and grazing experiment in an alpine grassland to investigate the effects of warming and grazing on plant uptake of NO3−-N, NH4+-N, and glycine-N. Four dominant plant species (Kobresia humilis, Potentilla anseria, Elymus nutans, Poa annua) were selected. Results We found that 10-years of warming decreased plant uptake of inorganic N by up to 80% in all species. In contrast, warming increased the uptake of organic N in K. humilis, P. anseria, and E. nutans but not in P. annua. Results showed that plant relative biomass increased hyperbolically with the ratio of the plant species total uptake of available N and plant community uptake of available N. And a significant positive correlation between plant species uptake of soil glycine-N and the uptake of total available N.

Conclusions

The stable relative biomass of plant species is largely dependent on organic N uptake by plants. We conclude that plant organic N uptake maintains species dominance under long-term warming.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by funding from the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20050104), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0501802), the National Science Foundation of China (31672474, 41731175, 31872994, 31770524), Key program of Tibet Department of Science and Technology, and the NRN-LCEE Sêr Cymru Climate-Smart Grasslands Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Alpine Ecology, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Lili Jiang, Shiping Wang, Yaoming Li & Lirong Zhang

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Shiping Wang

  3. College of Life Sciences, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Pang Zhe & Yanfen Wang

  4. Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modelling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Xingliang Xu

  5. Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 901 83, Umeå, Sweden

    Paul Kardol

  6. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, University/China-Australia Centre for Sustainable Urban Development, Tianjin, China

    Zhong Lei

  7. Center for Watershed Ecology, Institute of Life Sciences, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China

    Zhichun Lan

  8. School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography, Bangor University, Gwynedd, LL57 2UW, UK

    Paul W. Hill & Davey L. Jones

  9. Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, China

    Zhenhua Zhang & Caiyun Luo

  10. School of Earth and Environment and Institute of Agriculture Crawley, AUS, University of Western Australia Faculty of Law, Perth, Australia

    Yichao Rui

  11. Geography and Environmental Sciences (SAGES), Centre for Past Climate Change and School of Archaeology, University of Reading, Reading, Reading, UK

    Dong Ning

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  1. Lili Jiang
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  2. Shiping Wang
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  3. Pang Zhe
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  8. Yanfen Wang
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  12. Zhenhua Zhang
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  16. Davey L. Jones
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Correspondence to Lili Jiang or Yanfen Wang.

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Jiang, L., Wang, S., Zhe, P. et al. Plant organic N uptake maintains species dominance under long-term warming. Plant Soil 433, 243–255 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3836-x

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