Sarah Pellkofer

University of Zurich | UZH · Institut für Evolutionsbiologie und Umweltwissenschaften

Theoretical and empirical advances have revealed the importance of biodiversity for stabilizing ecosystem functions through time. Despite the global degradation of soils, whether the loss of soil microbial diversity can destabilize ecosystem functioning is poorly understood. Here, we experimentally quantified the contribution of soil fungal and bac...

Theoretical and empirical advances have revealed the importance of biodiversity for stabilizing ecosystem functions through time. Yet despite the global degradation of soils, how the loss of soil microbial diversity can de-stabilizes ecosystem functioning is unknown. Here we experimentally quantified the contribution diversity and the temporal dyna...

Background: Over the past two decades many studies have demonstrated that plant species diversity promotes primary productivity and stability in grassland ecosystems. Additionally, soil community characteristics have also been shown to influence the productivity and composition of plant communities, yet little is known about whether soil communiti...

ANOVA results for responses in plant community characteristics to inoculum site origin, treatment and harvest. Plant community characteristics are net aboveground productivity (NAP), richness, Shannon diversity (H’), inverse Simpson diversity (1/D), and evenness (Evar). Density (the total number of individual plants in each community), harvest peri...

Inocula soil history with initial soil properties analyses results. (TIF)

Figure showing plant community characteristics in relation to the inoculum site origin. Mean values with 95% confidence intervals are provided for the (a) NAP, (b) richness, (c) Shannon diversity, (d) inverse Simpson diversity, (e) evenness, (f) community stability, and (g) species asynchrony of plant communities with an unaltered soil community (d...

ANOVA results for the response in stability and species asynchrony to the soil inocula treatments and the inoculum site origin. (TIF)

Figure showing plant community characteristics in relation to the inoculum treatments at each harvest point. Mean values are shown with 95% confidence intervals of plant (a) NAP, (b) richness, (c) Shannon diversity, (d) inverse Simpson diversity, and (e) evenness for each harvest the unaltered (dark points) and sterilized (light points) soil commun...

ANOVA results for the effect of the soil community treatments on the stability in the biomass of individual species and the covariance between the individual plant species and NAP. (TIF)

Background/Question/Methods Soil microbes, although for the most part unseen, represent the largest portion of life on this planet and are crucial for the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. But, soil community composition is dependent on soil history and may consequently alter the sensitivity of soil communities to biodiversity loss. Increased...