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Species turnover reveals hidden effects of decreasing nitrogen deposition in mountain hay meadows

Nitrogen (N) deposition is a major threat to biodiversity in many habitats. The recent introduction of cleaner technologies in Switzerland has led to a reduction in the emissions of nitrogen oxides, with a consequent decrease in N deposition. We examined different drivers of plant community change,...

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Autores principales: Roth, Tobias, Kohli, Lukas, Bühler, Christoph, Rihm, Beat, Meuli, Reto Giulio, Meier, Reto, Amrhein, Valentin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6368833/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30755829
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6347
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author Roth, Tobias
Kohli, Lukas
Bühler, Christoph
Rihm, Beat
Meuli, Reto Giulio
Meier, Reto
Amrhein, Valentin
author_facet Roth, Tobias
Kohli, Lukas
Bühler, Christoph
Rihm, Beat
Meuli, Reto Giulio
Meier, Reto
Amrhein, Valentin
author_sort Roth, Tobias
collection PubMed
description Nitrogen (N) deposition is a major threat to biodiversity in many habitats. The recent introduction of cleaner technologies in Switzerland has led to a reduction in the emissions of nitrogen oxides, with a consequent decrease in N deposition. We examined different drivers of plant community change, that is, N deposition, climate warming, and land-use change, in Swiss mountain hay meadows, using data from the Swiss biodiversity monitoring program. We compared indicator values of species that disappeared from or colonized a site (species turnover) with the indicator values of randomly chosen species from the same site. While oligotrophic plant species were more likely to colonize, compared to random expectation, we found only weak shifts in plant community composition. In particular, the average nutrient value of plant communities remained stable over time (2003–2017). We found the largest deviations from random expectation in the nutrient values of colonizing species, suggesting that N deposition or other factors that change the nutrient content of soils were important drivers of the species composition change over the last 15 years in Swiss mountain hay meadows. In addition, we observed an overall replacement of species with lower indicator values for temperature with species with higher values. Apparently, the community effects of the replacement of eutrophic species with oligotrophic species was outweighed by climate warming. Our results add to the increasing evidence that plant communities in changing environments may be relatively stable regarding average species richness or average indicator values, but that this apparent stability is often accompanied by a marked turnover of species.
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spelling pubmed-63688332019-02-12 Species turnover reveals hidden effects of decreasing nitrogen deposition in mountain hay meadows Roth, Tobias Kohli, Lukas Bühler, Christoph Rihm, Beat Meuli, Reto Giulio Meier, Reto Amrhein, Valentin PeerJ Biodiversity Nitrogen (N) deposition is a major threat to biodiversity in many habitats. The recent introduction of cleaner technologies in Switzerland has led to a reduction in the emissions of nitrogen oxides, with a consequent decrease in N deposition. We examined different drivers of plant community change, that is, N deposition, climate warming, and land-use change, in Swiss mountain hay meadows, using data from the Swiss biodiversity monitoring program. We compared indicator values of species that disappeared from or colonized a site (species turnover) with the indicator values of randomly chosen species from the same site. While oligotrophic plant species were more likely to colonize, compared to random expectation, we found only weak shifts in plant community composition. In particular, the average nutrient value of plant communities remained stable over time (2003–2017). We found the largest deviations from random expectation in the nutrient values of colonizing species, suggesting that N deposition or other factors that change the nutrient content of soils were important drivers of the species composition change over the last 15 years in Swiss mountain hay meadows. In addition, we observed an overall replacement of species with lower indicator values for temperature with species with higher values. Apparently, the community effects of the replacement of eutrophic species with oligotrophic species was outweighed by climate warming. Our results add to the increasing evidence that plant communities in changing environments may be relatively stable regarding average species richness or average indicator values, but that this apparent stability is often accompanied by a marked turnover of species. PeerJ Inc. 2019-02-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6368833/ /pubmed/30755829 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6347 Text en © 2019 Roth et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Roth, Tobias
Kohli, Lukas
Bühler, Christoph
Rihm, Beat
Meuli, Reto Giulio
Meier, Reto
Amrhein, Valentin
Species turnover reveals hidden effects of decreasing nitrogen deposition in mountain hay meadows
title Species turnover reveals hidden effects of decreasing nitrogen deposition in mountain hay meadows
title_full Species turnover reveals hidden effects of decreasing nitrogen deposition in mountain hay meadows
title_fullStr Species turnover reveals hidden effects of decreasing nitrogen deposition in mountain hay meadows
title_full_unstemmed Species turnover reveals hidden effects of decreasing nitrogen deposition in mountain hay meadows
title_short Species turnover reveals hidden effects of decreasing nitrogen deposition in mountain hay meadows
title_sort species turnover reveals hidden effects of decreasing nitrogen deposition in mountain hay meadows
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6368833/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30755829
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6347
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