Abstract
Biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning through complementarity
effects, driven by many species, and selection effects, driven by few.
Selection effects occur through interspecific abundance shifts
(dominance) and intraspecific shifts in functioning. Complementarity and
selection are often calculated for biomass, but we know little about how
diversity affects other ecosystem functions. We calculated diversity
effects for aboveground biomass, insect herbivory, pathogen infection
and two leaf traits as nutrient cycling proxies, in a grassland
experiment (PaNDiv) manipulating species richness, functional
composition, nitrogen enrichment and fungicide treatment.
Complementarity effects were always positive, showing that multiple
species contribute to diversity effects. Intraspecific selection effects
were always negative because species converged in their functioning in
polyculture. Despite these overall consistencies, diversity effects for
the five functions were not correlated, suggesting different species
drive the different functions. These results show that different
underlying mechanisms can result in similar overall diversity effects
across functions.