PuSH - Publication Server of Helmholtz Zentrum München: JenaTron - An experimental approach to study the effects of plant history and soil history on grassland ecosystem functioning.

Information

Clues to quality of journals

Open Access Policy of Helmholtz Association 2016

CC Licencences

Publication Metrics

Navigation

Home

Deutsch

Research

Advanced Search

Browse by ...

... HMGU-Authors/Consortia

... Organizational Structure

... Journal

... Publication Type

... Research Data

... Arbeitsgruppen

... Publication Year

Publication overview

Statistics

Statistics (last 5 years)

OA Publications

Publish

Submit Publication

Import publication from...

...EVA

Report missing publication

Highlights

Support & Contact

Contact persons

Help

Data protection

Helmholtz Open Science

JANE Journal Estimator

SHERPA/RoMEO

DOAJ

Export:

Text

Endnote (RIS) BIB

BibTeX

Madaj, A.M.* ; Huang, Y.* ; Ebeling, A.* ; Ertel, L.* ; Gebler, A.* ; Gleixner, G.* ; Hines, J.* ; Roscher, C.* ; Weigelt, A.* ; Albracht, C.* ; Amyntas, A.* ; Bassi, L.* ; Bonato Asato, A.E.* ; Bonkowski, M.* ; Bröcher, M.* ; Buscot, F.* ; De Giorgi, F.* ; Pinheiro Alves de Souza, Y. ; Doan, V.C.* ; Durka, W.* ; Heintz-Buschart, A.* ; Hennecke, J.* ; Lange, M.* ; Medina-van Berkum, P.* ; Meyer, S.T.* ; Krawczyk, S.* ; Rai, A.* ; Reitz, T.* ; Ristok, C.* ; Scheu, S.* ; Schloter, M. ; Schulz, S. ; Solbach, M.D.* ; Unsicker, S.B.* ; Eisenhauer, N.*

JenaTron - An experimental approach to study the effects of plant history and soil history on grassland ecosystem functioning.

J. Vis. Exp.:22 (2025)

Publ. Version/Full Text

DOI

PMC

	Open Access Hybrid

Abstract
Metrics
Extra information

The global loss of biodiversity has motivated many studies that experimentally vary plant species richness and examine the consequences for ecosystem functioning. Such experiments generally show a positive relationship between above- and below-ground biodiversity and the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Moreover, this relationship tends to strengthen over time, seen as enhanced functioning of diverse plant communities and reduced functioning of low-diversity plant communities. Differences in multitrophic community assembly and biotic interactions in high- versus low-diversity plant communities are hypothesized to affect plant performance by altering consumer community structure and function and driving plastic or micro-evolutionary responses of plant species in the plant communities. To resolve this complex interplay of community history, we separated these effects into plant and soil history. Plant history refers to all plant-level responses to past abiotic and biotic selection pressures experienced in their communities, while soil history relates to all abiotic and biotic soil properties developed as a legacy of plant-soil interactions under variable plant diversity. We set up a biodiversity experiment in an Ecotron, a terrestrial mesocosm facility that allows controlling environmental conditions above- and below-ground, to test whether the strengthening biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship is due to soil history, plant history, or a combination of both. We established a plant diversity gradient consisting of 1, 2, 3, and 6 grassland plant species and factorially nested with soil history and plant history treatments for each level of plant species richness. Representative results demonstrate the successful establishment of target treatments in the Ecotron experiment, observing the effects of plant and soil history on initial plant development and final plant growth. Additionally, we provide a case study for data analysis of individual response variables. We outline research objectives and methods to comprehensively assess the multifunctional responses to the experimental treatments necessary to ultimately address the overarching hypothesis.

Impact Factor

Scopus SNIP

Altmetric

1.000

0.000