Herbivore dung quality affects plant community diversity

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Abstract

Nutrient availability is important for plant community composition and diversity, but most studies focus on inorganic nutrients. Far less is known about the impact of nutrients in organic forms such as herbivore dung. Here we show that dung of 11 European herbivore species varies widely in nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations, as well as in C:N:P ratios. We demonstrate that variation in dung quality of five herbivore species influences the diversity and composition of a mesocosm plant community. The impact of dung quality was at least as strong as, or stronger than, the effect of manipulating the quantity of dung by a factor six. Our study supports the hypothesis that both nutrient quantity and nutrient imbalances are important controlling factors for plant species diversity, and stresses the important role of herbivores on plant communities, not only via selective foraging, but also via stoichiometric variation of nutrients in their dung.

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N : P ratios in terrestrial plants: variation and functional significance

Sabine Güsewell (2004)

Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) availability limit plant growth in most terrestrial ecosystems. This review examines how variation in the relative availability of N and P, as reflected by N : P ratios of plant biomass, influences vegetation composition and functioning. Plastic responses of plants to N and P supply cause up to 50-fold variation in biomass N : P ratios, associated with differences in root allocation, nutrient uptake, biomass turnover and reproductive output. Optimal N : P ratios - those of plants whose growth is equally limited by N and P - depend on species, growth rate, plant age and plant parts. At vegetation level, N : P ratios <10 and >20 often (not always) correspond to N- and P-limited biomass production, as shown by short-term fertilization experiments; however long-term effects of fertilization or effects on individual species can be different. N : P ratios are on average higher in graminoids than in forbs, and in stress-tolerant species compared with ruderals; they correlate negatively with the maximal relative growth rates of species and with their N-indicator values. At vegetation level, N : P ratios often correlate negatively with biomass production; high N : P ratios promote graminoids and stress tolerators relative to other species, whereas relationships with species richness are not consistent. N : P ratios are influenced by global change, increased atmospheric N deposition, and conservation managment. Contents Summary 243 I Introduction 244 II Variability of N : P ratios in response to nutrient supply 244 III Critical N : P ratios as indicators of nutrient limitation 248 IV Interspecific variation in N : P ratios 252 V Vegetation properties in relation to N : P ratios 255 VI Implications of N : P ratios for human impacts on ecosystems 258 VII Conclusions 259 Acknowledgements 259 References 260.

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An ignition method for determination of total phosphorus in lake sediments

J J Andersen (1976)

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Separating the influence of resource 'availability' from resource 'imbalance' on productivity-diversity relationships.

Bradley Cardinale, Helmut Hillebrand, W. Harpole … (2009)

One of the oldest and richest questions in biology is that of how species diversity is related to the availability of resources that limit the productivity of ecosystems. Researchers from a variety of disciplines have pursued this question from at least three different theoretical perspectives. Species energy theory has argued that the summed quantities of all resources influence species richness by controlling population sizes and the probability of stochastic extinction. Resource ratio theory has argued that the imbalance in the supply of two or more resources, relative to the stoichiometric needs of the competitors, can dictate the strength of competition and, in turn, the diversity of coexisting species. In contrast to these, the field of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning has argued that species diversity acts as an independent variable that controls how efficiently limited resources are utilized and converted into new tissue. Here we propose that all three of these fields give necessary, but not sufficient, conditions to explain productivity-diversity relationships (PDR) in nature. However, when taken collectively, these three paradigms suggest that PDR can be explained by interactions among four distinct, non-interchangeable variables: (i) the overall quantity of limiting resources, (ii) the stoichiometric ratios of different limiting resources, (iii) the summed biomass produced by a group of potential competitors and (iv) the richness of co-occurring species in a local competitive community. We detail a new multivariate hypothesis that outlines one way in which these four variables are directly and indirectly related to one another. We show how the predictions of this model can be fit to patterns of covariation relating the richness and biomass of lake phytoplankton to three biologically essential resources (N, P and light) in a large number of Norwegian lakes.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Harry Olde Venterink:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8963-1153

harry.olde.venterink@vub.be

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Rep

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Rep

Title: Scientific Reports

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 2045-2322

Publication date (Electronic): 5 April 2019

Publication date PMC-release: 5 April 2019

Publication date Collection: 2019

Volume: 9

Electronic Location Identifier: 5675

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2290 8069, GRID grid.8767.e, Department of Biology, , Vrije Universiteit Brussel, ; Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium

[2 ]Biogeco, INRA, University of Bordeaux, F-33610 Cestas, France

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0001 1013 0288, GRID grid.418375.c, Departments of Aquatic and Terrestrial Ecology, , Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), ; Droevendaalsesteeg 10, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands

[4 ]ISNI 0000000120346234, GRID grid.5477.1, Environmental Sciences, , Utrecht University, ; Heidelberglaan 2, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands

[5 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2290 8069, GRID grid.8767.e, Analytical, Environmental and Geochemistry, , Vrije Universiteit Brussel, ; Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium

Author information

Judith Sitters http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2926-5339

Natacha Brion http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3021-1445

Harry Olde Venterink http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8963-1153

Article

Publisher ID: 42249

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-42249-z

PMC ID: 6450897

PubMed ID: 30952928

SO-VID: 39f9d45d-41aa-429d-8c68-bac956d72801

License:

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

Date received : 21 May 2018

Date accepted : 12 March 2019

Funding

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003130, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Research Foundation Flanders);

Funded by: FWO (Research foundation Flanders)

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Herbivore dung quality affects plant community diversity

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International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies

Most cited references 19

N : P ratios in terrestrial plants: variation and functional significance

An ignition method for determination of total phosphorus in lake sediments

Separating the influence of resource 'availability' from resource 'imbalance' on productivity-diversity relationships.

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