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{"Abstract":["This study investigated the question, "Does climate change\n affect vegetation and seed bank composition in desert\n grasslands?" The work was done in the Sevilleta National\n Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, USA, in in the Extreme Drought in\n Grassland Experiment (EDGE). Vegetation and seed bank species\n composition were recorded in black grama (Bouteloua eriopoda) and\n blue grama (B. gracilis) grasslands at Sevilleta. At each site, two\n rainfall manipulations and ambient controls were established in 2013\n (n=10). Treatments included extreme drought (-66% rainfall\n reduction) and delayed monsoon (precipitation captured during\n July-August and reapplied during September-October). Aboveground\n species composition was assessed and composite soil samples were\n collected in 2017, five years after the experiment started. Seed\n bank composition was evaluated using the seedling emergence method.\n Rainfall treatments increased aboveground species richness at both\n sites, and seed bank richness only in the blue grama community.\n Vegetation cover was reduced by both rainfall manipulations, but\n seed bank density increased or remained the same compared with\n controls. In aboveground vegetation, cover of annual and perennial\n forbs increased, and dominant perennial grasses decreased. In the\n soil seed bank, species composition was similar among all treatments\n and was dominated by annual and perennial forbs. The seed bank was\n more resistant to drought than aboveground vegetation. Because seed\n banks enhance long-term community stability, their drought\n resistance plays an important role in maintaining ecosystem\n processes during and following drought in these grassland\n communities."]}
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This content will become publicly available on October 1, 2026
Species reordering increases community variability driven by chronic nutrient addition
Abstract Reordering of abundances among species is a common response in communities whether affected by anthropogenic drivers or natural disturbance. However, understanding how competitive relationships drive community dynamics under global environmental change remains limited, primarily due to uncertainties related to changes in species interactions and the scarcity of long‐term observations. By combining long‐term data and time series analysis tools, we quantified the compositional dynamics and causal interactions among functional groups of an arid grassland community under chronic nutrient enrichment for 15 years following wildfire. We hypothesized that chronic nutrient addition would promote species reordering among dominant grasses and subordinate annual forbs after wildfire, thereby increasing biomass and compositional variation over the long term. Contrary to expectations, while the abundance of the dominant grassBouteloua eriopoda(black grama) declined immediately after the wildfire, the increase in annual forbs under N addition did not occur until a decade later. Convergent cross‐mapping revealed that annuals were causally influenced by black grama abundance and maintained relatively lower abundance in control plots. However, with N addition, this causal interaction from black grama to annuals disappeared. Accordingly, temporal variability of biomass and community composition increased as the abundance of annuals rose. Combined with evidence of precipitation response, these results imply that the competitive advantage of perennial plants over annual forbs could serve as a stabilizing mechanism for community variability by limiting the response of annuals to precipitation fluctuations. However, this stabilizing process is disrupted by the cumulative effects of chronic nitrogen addition. This long‐term experiment provides new insights into the destabilizing effects of community reordering, without changes in species richness, in response to anthropogenic nutrient loading.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2425290
- PAR ID:
- 10654250
- Publisher / Repository:
- John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Ecology
- Volume:
- 106
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 0012-9658
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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