title: Heterogeneous microcommunities and ecosystem multifunctionality in seminatural grasslands under three management modes.
abstract: Increasing attention has been paid to the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) because of the rapid increase in species loss. However, over the past 20 years, most BEF studies only focused on the effect of species diversity on one or a few ecosystem functions, and only a few studies focused on ecosystem multifunctionality (i.e., the simultaneous provision of several ecosystem functions). Grassland ecosystems have important economic, environmental, and esthetic value; thus, this study focused on the heterogeneous microcommunities in grasslands under three management modes. The multifunctionality index (M-index) was assessed at community and microcommunity scales, and the relationship between species diversity and multifunctionality was investigated. The communities were found to be respectively composed of one, three, and six microcommunities in grazing, clipping, and enclosure management, based on a two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN) and detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) for community structure. Biodiversity and soil indicators showed an apparent degradation of the grazing community, which had the worstM-index. Clipping and enclosure communities showed no significant difference in biodiversity indices, soil variables, andM-index; however, these indices were clearly different among microcommunities. Therefore, the microcommunity scale may be suitable to investigate the relationship between vegetation and multifunctionality in seminatural grassland ecosystems. Dominant species richness had more explanatory power for ecosystem multifunctionality than subdominant species richness, rare species richness, and the number of all species. Therefore, it is important to distinguish the role and rank of different species in the species richness-multifunctionality model; otherwise, the model might include redundant and unclear information. Communities with more codominant species whose distribution is also even might have better multifunctionality.
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science Nankai University Tianjin China.
authors.forename: Jingpeng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science Nankai University Tianjin China; State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Regional Eco-Process and Function Assessment Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences Beijing China.
authors.forename: Zhirong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: Research Institutes of Subtropical Forestry Chinese Academy of Forestry Fuyang Zhejiang 311400 China.
authors.forename: Hongtao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science Nankai University Tianjin China.
authors.forename: Nianxi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science Nankai University Tianjin China.
authors.forename: Yubao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Gao
keywords: TWINSPAN; biodiversity; grassland; microcommunity; multifunctionality; species richness