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Neighborhoods have little effect on fungal attack or insect predation of developing seeds in a grassland biodiversity experiment

  • Community ecology - Original research
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Abstract

Numerous observational studies have documented conspecific negative density-dependence that is consistent with the Janzen–Connell Hypothesis (JCH) of diversity maintenance. However, there have been few experimental tests of a central prediction of the JCH: that removing host-specific enemies should lead to greater increases in per capita recruitment in areas of higher host density or lower relative phylogenetic diversity. Using spatially randomized plots of high and low host biomass in a temperate grassland biodiversity experiment, we treated developing seedheads of six prairie perennials to factorial applications of fungicide and insecticide. We measured predispersal seed production, seed viability, and seedling biomass. Results were highly species-specific and idiosyncratic. Effects of insect seed predators and fungal pathogens on predispersal responses varied with neither conspecific biomass nor phylogenetic diversity, suggesting that—at least at the predispersal stage and for the insect and fungal seed predators we were able to exclude—the JCH is not sufficient to contribute to negative conspecific density-dependence for these dominant prairie species.

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Acknowledgments

We thank L. Knutson, D. DeVetter, S. Jerke, and a crew of field-hardened Cedar Creek interns for their invaluable assistance in collecting these data; D. Vellekson for his help with legume seed germination; S. Hobbie for insightful comments that substantially improved the quality of this paper. NGB was supported by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Program of Excellence in Population Biology. The experiments comply with the current laws of the country (USA) in which the experiments were performed.

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  1. Noelle G. Beckman

    Present address: Mathematical Biosciences Institute, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

  2. Ray Dybzinski

    Present address: Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, 68588, USA

    Noelle G. Beckman

  2. Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA

    Ray Dybzinski & G. David Tilman

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  1. Noelle G. Beckman
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Correspondence to Ray Dybzinski.

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Communicated by Scott Collins.

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Beckman, N.G., Dybzinski, R. & Tilman, G.D. Neighborhoods have little effect on fungal attack or insect predation of developing seeds in a grassland biodiversity experiment. Oecologia 174, 521–532 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-013-2788-3

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