title: Space resource utilisation: a novel indicator to quantify species competitive ability for light.
abstract: Species richness and productivity are two fundamental aspects of ecosystems. As a result, the relationship between species richness and productivity has been widely studied. A series of fertilisation experiments in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau were performed to study the relationship between species richness and productivity. In this paper, we present a novel indicator, i.e., space resource utilisation (SRU), which is calculated by a volume formula (V(i)  =  h(i) · S(i); h(i) = plant height of species i, S(i) = quadrat area × percent cover of species i). SRU more fully reflected species competitive ability for light in both horizontal and vertical dimensions compared with plant height and cover. We used this novel indicator to investigate the effects of SRU on the changes in species richness and productivity following fertilisation. We found that the SRU of the community was correlated with increasing productivity and decreasing species richness following fertilisation and was a better predictor of species richness than productivity. The changes in SRU following fertilisation vary among species. These results demonstrate that SRU can be a more useful tool in explaining plant biodiversity loss and predicting the fate of different species than each of height, cover and productivity.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, 730000, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Pengfei
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, 730000, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xiaolong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, 730000, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Junyong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, 730000, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Zhi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, 730000, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Guozhen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Du
mesh_terms: D000531:Altitude; D044822:Biodiversity; D018533:Biomass; D056084:Genetic Fitness; D065948:Grassland; D008027:Light; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics*; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D018609:Tibet