Higher effect of plant species diversity on productivity in natural than artificial ecosystems

P. FLOMBAUM AND O. E. SALA

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Año: 2008 vol. 105 p. 6087 - 6090

0027-8424

Current and expected changes in biodiversity have motivatedmajor experiments, which reported a positive relationship betweenplant species diversity and primary production. As a firststep in addressing this relationship, these manipulative experimentscontrolled as many potential confounding covariables aspossible and assembled artificial ecosystems for the purpose of theexperiments. As a new step in this endeavor, we asked how plantspecies richness relates to productivity in a natural ecosystem.Here, we report on an experiment conducted in a natural ecosystemin the Patagonian steppe, in which we assessed the biodiversityeffect on primary production. Using a plant species diversitygradient generated by removing species while maintaining constantbiomass, we found that aboveground net primary productionincreased with the number of plant species. We also found that thebiodiversity effect was larger in natural than in artificial ecosystems.This result supports previous findings and also suggests thatthe effect of biodiversity in natural ecosystems may be much largerthan currently thought.