| 1. |
- Allan, Eric, et al.
(författare)
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Interannual variation in land-use intensity enhances grassland multidiversity
- 2014
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 1091-6490 .- 0027-8424. ; 111:1, s. 308-313
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although temporal heterogeneity is a well-accepted driver of biodiversity, effects of interannual variation in land-use intensity (LUI) have not been addressed yet. Additionally, responses to land use can differ greatly among different organisms; therefore, overall effects of land-use on total local biodiversity are hardly known. To test for effects of LUI (quantified as the combined intensity of fertilization, grazing, and mowing) and interannual variation in LUI (SD in LUI across time), we introduce a unique measure of whole-ecosystem biodiversity, multidiversity. This synthesizes individual diversity measures across up to 49 taxonomic groups of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria from 150 grasslands. Multidiversity declined with increasing LUI among grasslands, particularly for rarer species and aboveground organisms, whereas common species and belowground groups were less sensitive. However, a high level of interannual variation in LUI increased overall multidiversity at low LUI and was even more beneficial for rarer species because it slowed the rate at which the multidiversity of rare species declined with increasing LUI. In more intensively managed grasslands, the diversity of rarer species was, on average, 18% of the maximum diversity across all grasslands when LUI was static over time but increased to 31% of the maximum when LUI changed maximally over time. In addition to decreasing overall LUI, we suggest varying LUI across years as a complementary strategy to promote biodiversity conservation.
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| 2. |
- Schleuning, Matthias, et al.
(författare)
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Specialization of Mutualistic Interaction Networks Decreases toward Tropical Latitudes
- 2012
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Ingår i: Current Biology. - : Elsevier BV. - 1879-0445 .- 0960-9822. ; 22:20, s. 1925-1931
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Species-rich tropical communities are expected to be more specialized than their temperate counterparts [1-3]. Several studies have reported increasing biotic specialization toward the tropics [4-7], whereas others have not found latitudinal trends once accounting for sampling bias [8, 9] or differences in plant diversity [10, 11]. Thus, the direction of the latitudinal Specialization gradient remains contentious. With an unprecedented global data set, we investigated how biotic specialization between plants and animal pollinators or seed dispersers is associated with latitude, past and contemporary climate, and plant diversity. We show that in contrast to expectation, biotic specialization of mutualistic networks is significantly lower at tropical than at temperate latitudes. Specialization was more closely related to contemporary climate than to past climate stability, suggesting that current conditions have a stronger effect on biotic specialization than historical community stability. Biotic specialization decreased with increasing local and regional plant diversity. This suggests that high specialization of mutualistic interactions is a response of pollinators and seed dispersers to low plant diversity. This could explain why the latitudinal specialization gradient is reversed relative to the latitudinal diversity gradient. Low mutualistic network specialization in the tropics suggests higher tolerance against extinctions in tropical than in temperate communities.
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