Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for Coastal and Wetland Ecosystems, College of the Environment & Ecology, Xiamen University, 361102, Xiamen, China.
Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057, Zürich, Switzerland.
Nat Commun. 2022 Jun 9;13(1):3217. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-30954-9.
Growing threats from extreme climatic events and biodiversity loss have raised concerns about their interactive consequences for ecosystem functioning. Evidence suggests biodiversity can buffer ecosystem functioning during such climatic events. However, whether exposure to extreme climatic events will strengthen the biodiversity-dependent buffering effects for future generations remains elusive. We assess such transgenerational effects by exposing experimental grassland communities to eight recurrent summer droughts versus ambient conditions in the field. Seed offspring of 12 species are then subjected to a subsequent drought event in the glasshouse, grown individually, in monocultures or in 2-species mixtures. Comparing productivity between mixtures and monocultures, drought-selected plants show greater between-species complementarity than ambient-selected plants when recovering from the subsequent drought, causing stronger biodiversity effects on productivity and better recovery of drought-selected mixtures after the drought. These findings suggest exposure to recurrent climatic events can improve ecosystem responses to future events through transgenerational reinforcement of species complementarity.
极端气候事件和生物多样性丧失带来的日益严重的威胁，引起了人们对它们对生态系统功能相互影响的关注。有证据表明，生物多样性可以在这种气候事件期间缓冲生态系统功能。然而，暴露于极端气候事件是否会增强未来几代人对生物多样性的依赖缓冲效应仍不清楚。我们通过在野外将实验草地群落暴露于 8 次夏季反复干旱与自然条件下，来评估这种跨代效应。然后，将 12 个物种的种子后代在温室中单独种植、在单一种群或 2 种混合种群中进行后续干旱事件。将混合物和单种群之间的生产力进行比较，在从后续干旱中恢复时，干旱选择的植物比自然选择的植物表现出更大的种间互补性，从而导致生产力方面的生物多样性效应更强，并且干旱选择的混合物在干旱后更好地恢复。这些发现表明，通过跨代强化物种互补性，暴露于反复出现的气候事件可以改善生态系统对未来事件的反应。
