Evan Meranchik
Research Mentor(s): Liting Zheng
Mentor Department: Institute for Global Change and Biology
Authors:
Session: Session 4 (1:00pm – 1:50pm)
Presentation Type: Poster 80
Abstract
Despite extensive research about the importance of biodiversity and drought with considerations to ecosystem-level responses, there is limited research on how the two factors interact to affect ecosystems. Increased plant species richness has been shown to help alleviate the negative effects of drought at the ecosystem level, but evidence supporting this is usually limited to ecosystem productivity. Our study examines how plant diversity affects nutrient-use at the ecosystem level under drought. We conducted a meta-analysis to analyze differences in nutrient-use among communities grown in monocultures and in mixed cultures exposed to either drought or normal rainfall conditions. Data were extracted from articles found through keyword searches in Web of Science that fit the criteria of including both monocultures and mixed cultures with drought exposure and normal rainfall exposure. Measurements that indicate ecosystem functioning with regards to nutrient-use were extracted from each study, and data analysis was performed through R to analyze the overall effects of plant diversity on ecosystem nutrient-use strategies under drought. We found that overall, the diversity effect for strategies related to nutrient conservation was slightly increased under drought conditions and slightly decreased under normal conditions, while the opposite was true for strategies related to nutrient consumption. The implications of these findings are rethinking how plant diversity is manipulated to alleviate the negative ecosystem-level effects of drought. This project contributes to a greater understanding of how plant diversity and drought interact to determine ecosystem functioning.
