Functional compensation and ecosystem functioning in a montane shrubland

GURVICH, DE; DÍAZ, S

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California at Santa Barbara, EE. UU.

Workshop; Workhop on the Role of community-reduction experiments in assessing biodiversity effects on ecosystem processes; 2004

NCEAS

We designed a community-reduction experiment in the mountains of C´rodoba, Argentina, in order to test the hypothesis of funcitonal redundancy and compensation among members of different funtional types. We selectively removed whole functional types or the most dominant species of each of them. The treatemsn were: control, disturbed control, removal of deciduous shrubs or ACacia caven, removal of perennial graminoids or Stipa eryostachya, removal of annuals or Bidens pilosa, removal of perennial forbs or Hyptis capillaris. We measured soil temperature and nutreint availability, changes in abundance or remaining species and changes in LAI. After 3 hears of treatment we found no evidence of functional or biomass compensation in general. Only among deciduous shrubs there was a weak indication of compensation. This preliminary results do not support the reduncy (or ecological insurance) hypothesis.