loading page

Animal movement and plant space-use drive plant diversity-productivity relationships
  • +3
  • Georg Albert,
  • Benoit Gauzens,
  • Remo Ryser,
  • Elisa Thébault,
  • Shaopeng Wang,
  • Ulrich Brose
Georg Albert
University of Göttingen

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

Author Profile
Benoit Gauzens
iDiv
Author Profile
Remo Ryser
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Author Profile
Elisa Thébault
Bioemco - UMR 7618 (CNRS, UPMC, ENS, IRD, AgroParisTech)
Author Profile
Shaopeng Wang
Peking University
Author Profile
Ulrich Brose
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Lepizig
Author Profile

Abstract

Plant community productivity generally increases with biodiversity, but the strength of this relationship exhibits strong empirical variation. In meta-food-web simulations, we addressed if the spatial overlap in plants' resource access and movement of animals can explain such variability. We found that spatial overlap of plant resource access is a prerequisite for positive diversity-productivity relationships, but causes exploitative competition that can lead to competitive exclusion. Movement of herbivores causes apparent competition among plants, resulting in negative relationships. However, movement of larger top predators integrates sub-food-webs composed of smaller species, offsetting the negative effects of exploitative and apparent competition and leading to strongly positive diversity-productivity relationships. Overall, our results show that spatial overlap of plant resource access and animal movement can greatly alter the strength and sign of such relationships. In particular, the scaling of animal movement effects opens new perspectives for linking landscape processes without effects on biodiversity to productivity patterns.
30 Jan 2023Submitted to Ecology Letters
01 Feb 2023Submission Checks Completed
01 Feb 2023Assigned to Editor
01 Feb 2023Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
13 Feb 2023Reviewer(s) Assigned
16 Mar 2023Editorial Decision: Revise Major
05 Jun 2023Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
05 Jun 20231st Revision Received
06 Jun 2023Submission Checks Completed
06 Jun 2023Assigned to Editor
07 Jun 2023Reviewer(s) Assigned
30 Jun 2023Editorial Decision: Revise Minor
13 Jul 2023Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
13 Jul 20232nd Revision Received
17 Jul 2023Submission Checks Completed
17 Jul 2023Assigned to Editor
17 Jul 2023Reviewer(s) Assigned
20 Jul 2023Editorial Decision: Accept