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. 2025 Apr;94(4):555-565.
doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.14241. Epub 2025 Jan 29.

Shared community history strengthens plant diversity effects on below-ground multitrophic functioning

Angelos Amyntas  1   2   3 , Benoit Gauzens  1   2 , Marcel Ciobanu  4 , Lara Warnke  3 , Mark Maraun  3 , Jörg-Alfred Salamon  5 , Mona Merkle  3 , Leonardo Bassi  6 , Justus Hennecke  2   6 , Markus Lange  7 , Gerd Gleixner  7 , Stefan Scheu  3 , Nico Eisenhauer  2   6 , Ulrich Brose  1   2
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Shared community history strengthens plant diversity effects on below-ground multitrophic functioning

Angelos Amyntas et al. J Anim Ecol. 2025 Apr.

Abstract

The relationship of plant diversity and several ecosystem functions strengthens over time. This suggests that the restructuring of biotic interactions in the process of a community's assembly and the associated changes in function differ between species-rich and species-poor communities. An important component of these changes is the feedback between plant and soil community history. In this study, we examined the interactive effects of plant richness and community history on the trophic functions of the soil fauna community. We hypothesized that experimental removal of either soil or plant community history would diminish the positive effects of plant richness on the multitrophic functions of the soil food web, compared to mature communities. We tested this hypothesis in a long-term grassland biodiversity experiment by comparing plots across three treatments (without plant history, without plant and soil history, controls with ~20 years of plot-specific community history). We found that the relationship between plant richness and below-ground multitrophic functionality is indeed stronger in communities with shared plant and soil community history. Our findings indicate that anthropogenic disturbance can impact the functioning of the soil community through the loss of plant species but also by preventing feedbacks that develop in the process of community assembly.

Keywords: below‐ground; community assembly; community history; detritivory; food webs; herbivory; predation; soil fauna communities.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The meta food web of the soil fauna community, depicting predatory (red), herbivorous (green), detritivorous (blue) and microbivorous (yellow) interactions of the taxa listed in Table S2. Silhouettes are public domain or CC‐BY 3.0 and available via phylopic.org (details in Table S3).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
The relationship between plant richness and summed energy flux for different combinations of plant and soil community history. (a) Total energy flux, (b) herbivory fluxes, (c) predation, (d) detritivory and (e) microbivory. Lines show mean estimates for the average richness–flux relationship bound by 90% uncertainty intervals. Dashed lines indicate relationships whose slope is not clearly different from zero.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The relationship between plant richness and (a) herbivory pressure on plants and (b) control of herbivory through predation. Lines show mean estimates for the average richness–function relationship bound by 90% uncertainty intervals. Dashed lines indicate relationships whose slope is not clearly different from zero.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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