TY  - JOUR
A1  - Venail, Patrick
A1  - Gross, Kevin
A1  - Oakley, Todd H.
A1  - Narwani, Anita
A1  - Allan, Eric
A1  - Flombaum, Pedro
A1  - Isbell, Forest
A1  - Joshi, Jasmin Radha
A1  - Reich, Peter B.
A1  - Tilman, David
A1  - van Ruijven, Jasper
A1  - Cardinale, Bradley J.
T1  - Species richness, but not phylogenetic diversity, influences community biomass production and temporal stability in a re-examination of 16 grassland biodiversity studies
JF  - Functional ecology : an official journal of the British Ecological Society
N2  - Hundreds of experiments have now manipulated species richness (SR) of various groups of organisms and examined how this aspect of biological diversity influences ecosystem functioning. Ecologists have recently expanded this field to look at whether phylogenetic diversity (PD) among species, often quantified as the sum of branch lengths on a molecular phylogeny leading to all species in a community, also predicts ecological function. Some have hypothesized that phylogenetic divergence should be a superior predictor of ecological function than SR because evolutionary relatedness represents the degree of ecological and functional differentiation among species. But studies to date have provided mixed support for this hypothesis. Here, we reanalyse data from 16 experiments that have manipulated plant SR in grassland ecosystems and examined the impact on above-ground biomass production over multiple time points. Using a new molecular phylogeny of the plant species used in these experiments, we quantified how the PD of plants impacts average community biomass production as well as the stability of community biomass production through time. Using four complementary analyses, we show that, after statistically controlling for variation in SR, PD (the sum of branches in a molecular phylogenetic tree connecting all species in a community) is neither related to mean community biomass nor to the temporal stability of biomass. These results run counter to past claims. However, after controlling for SR, PD was positively related to variation in community biomass over time due to an increase in the variances of individual species, but this relationship was not strong enough to influence community stability. In contrast to the non-significant relationships between PD, biomass and stability, our analyses show that SR per se tends to increase the mean biomass production of plant communities, after controlling for PD. The relationship between SR and temporal variation in community biomass was either positive, non-significant or negative depending on which analysis was used. However, the increases in community biomass with SR, independently of PD, always led to increased stability. These results suggest that PD is no better as a predictor of ecosystem functioning than SR.Synthesis. Our study on grasslands offers a cautionary tale when trying to relate PD to ecosystem functioning suggesting that there may be ecologically important trait and functional variation among species that is not explained by phylogenetic relatedness. Our results fail to support the hypothesis that the conservation of evolutionarily distinct species would be more effective than the conservation of SR as a way to maintain productive and stable communities under changing environmental conditions.
KW  - biodiversity
KW  - community biomass
KW  - data synthesis
KW  - ecosystem functioning
KW  - grasslands
KW  - phylogenetic diversity
KW  - relatedness
KW  - stability
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12432
SN  - 0269-8463
SN  - 1365-2435
VL  - 29
IS  - 5
SP  - 615
EP  - 626
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken
ER  -