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Biodiversity effects on biomass production and invasion resistance in annual versus perennial plant communities

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Plant Conservation and Biodiversity

Part of the book series: Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation ((TOBC,volume 6))

Abstract

In a field experiment we constructed two different communities using both annual and perennial plant species, in which species diversity is experimentally manipulated. We want to test the relationships between species diversity and biomass production and invasibility and the possible mechanisms driving this relationships, especially, whether the identical mechanisms drive both diversity-production and diversity-invasibility relationships. Our results indicated that a positive diversity-production relationship and negative diversity-invasibility and production-invasibility relationships emerged in two different communities. However, the mechanisms underlying are different in two communities. In the annual communities, the observed positive diversity-production and negative diversity-invasibility relationships are linked by the sampling effect. In the perennial communities, however, the mechanism responsible for these observed relationships are the complementarity effect. Our results also found that, in addition to species diversity, species composition also play an important role in governing the observed relationship. The results of our study suggest that because species in different communities may differ in their life history, biological and physiological traits, mechanisms responsible for the observed relationship between diversity and biomass production and invasibiltiy are likely different.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-Ecosystem, Ministry of Agriculture, PRC, College of Pastoral Agricultural Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730020, China

    Xiao Lei Jiang & Wei Guo Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Arid Agroecology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Gang Wang

Authors
  1. Xiao Lei Jiang
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  2. Wei Guo Zhang
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  3. Gang Wang
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Correspondence to Xiao Lei Jiang .

Editor information

David L. Hawksworth Alan T. Bull

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© 2006 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

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Jiang, X.L., Zhang, W.G., Wang, G. (2006). Biodiversity effects on biomass production and invasion resistance in annual versus perennial plant communities. In: Hawksworth, D.L., Bull, A.T. (eds) Plant Conservation and Biodiversity. Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6444-9_26

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