Can dominant species predict ecosystem responses to global change? (Project in progress)
- Drylands cover over 40% of the Earth’s land surface and support over two billion people with key ecosystem services like forage production, biodiversity conservation, and carbon storage. Many drylands consist of grasslands dominated by a single abundant (dominant or foundational) grass species. We aimed to identify key knowledge gaps for these important species and synthesize linkages between dryland dominant species and dryland ecosystem responses to global change.
- We discovered a global study bias against dryland dominant species and geographic knowledge gaps outside of North America. Based on 410 global change experiments from eight well-studied dominant dryland grasses worldwide, we found that aboveground biomass and cover were the most thoroughly studied traits, but nearly 500 unique traits have been examined in the existing literature.
- Synthesis. We now know that dominant dryland grasses can predict nearly 85% of the variation in ecosystem response to drought. Thus, dominant grass responses may be a useful indicator for the effects of global change-induced droughts. However, more research is needed to reveal relationships between dominant species, dryland ecosystems, and other global change drivers, such as eutrophication and warming. We highlight the need for more integrative research focused on linking responses of dominant species, especially mechanistically linked traits, to ecosystem responses to a range of global change drivers. Filling these gaps is crucial to revealing processes underlying dryland ecosystem response to global change and for dryland conservation and management.
Data available upon request