Abstract
A combination of theory and experiments predicts that increasing soil nutrients will modify herbivore and microbial impacts on ecosystem carbon cycling. However, few studies of herbivores and soil nutrients have measured both ecosystem carbon fluxes and carbon pools. Even more rare are studies manipulating microbes and nutrients that look at ecosystem carbon cycling responses. We added nutrients to a long-term, experiment manipulating foliar fungi, soil fungi, mammalian herbivores and arthropods in a low fertility grassland. We measured gross primary production (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), net ecosystem exchange (NEE) and plant biomass throughout the growing season to determine how nutrients modify consumer impacts on ecosystem carbon cycling. Nutrient addition increased above-ground biomass and GPP, but not ER, resulting in an increase in ecosystem carbon uptake rate. Reducing foliar fungi and arthropods increased plant biomass. Nutrients amplified consumer effects on plant biomass, such that arthropods and foliar fungi had a threefold larger impact on above-ground biomass in fertilized plots. Synthesis. Our work demonstrates that throughout the growing season soil resources modify carbon uptake rates as well as animal and fungal impacts on plant biomass production. Taken together, ongoing nutrient pollution may increase ecosystem carbon uptake and drive fungi and herbivores to have larger impacts on plant biomass production.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1629-1640 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Journal of Ecology |
| Volume | 111 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Special thanks to Sara de Sobrino, Megan Wilcots and Jeremiah Henning for assistance and guidance with carbon flux sampling and to Sarah Hobbie for comments on the manuscript. We also thank Jon Anderson, Troy Mielke, Anita Krause, Dan Bahauddin, Susan Barrott and Cedar Creek summer interns who all aided in the logistics, maintenance and data collection of this experiment. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved this manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the US National Science Foundation Long-Term Ecological Research Program (LTER) including DEB-1234162 and DEB-1831944. Funding from UMN EEB and Cedar Creek supported M.Z.
Funding Information:
Special thanks to Sara de Sobrino, Megan Wilcots and Jeremiah Henning for assistance and guidance with carbon flux sampling and to Sarah Hobbie for comments on the manuscript. We also thank Jon Anderson, Troy Mielke, Anita Krause, Dan Bahauddin, Susan Barrott and Cedar Creek summer interns who all aided in the logistics, maintenance and data collection of this experiment. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved this manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the US National Science Foundation Long‐Term Ecological Research Program (LTER) including DEB‐1234162 and DEB‐1831944. Funding from UMN EEB and Cedar Creek supported M.Z.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.
Keywords
- consumer-nutrient interaction
- ecosystem C fluxes
- fertilization
- fungi
- insects
- mammalian herbivores