Heterogeneous microcommunities and ecosystem multifunctionality in seminatural grasslands under three management...

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Environmental Science
• Conservation Biology

Background:

• Rapid species loss necessitates understanding biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationships.
• Previous BEF research predominantly focused on single ecosystem functions, with limited investigation into ecosystem multifunctionality.
• Grassland ecosystems possess significant economic, environmental, and esthetic value, making their study crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem multifunctionality in grassland microcommunities.
• To assess the multifunctionality index (M-index) at both community and microcommunity scales under different management modes.
• To determine the influence of different species richness metrics (dominant, subdominant, rare, total) on ecosystem multifunctionality.

Main Methods:

• Utilized two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN) and detrending correspondence analysis (DCA) to analyze community structure and identify microcommunities.
• Assessed the multifunctionality index (M-index) across different management modes (grazing, clipping, enclosure) and scales (community, microcommunity).
• Evaluated biodiversity and soil indicators to assess ecosystem health and functioning.

Main Results:

• Identified distinct microcommunities within each management mode: one in grazing, three in clipping, and six in enclosure.
• Grazing management resulted in degraded biodiversity and soil indicators, exhibiting the poorest M-index.
• Dominant species richness demonstrated greater explanatory power for ecosystem multifunctionality compared to other richness metrics.

Conclusions:

• The microcommunity scale is suitable for studying vegetation-multifunctionality relationships in semi-natural grasslands.
• Distinguishing the role and rank of species, particularly dominant ones, is crucial for accurate biodiversity-multifunctionality models.
• Grassland communities with abundant and evenly distributed codominant species tend to exhibit enhanced multifunctionality.