In arid and semi-arid rangelands, grazing as one of the natural or human induced processes has direct and indirect effects on structure and dynamics of plant community and ecosystems. A study was done to analyze the effects of grazing on plant species diversity and Plant Functional Types‘ (PFTs) diversity of arid and semi-arid rangelands. We analyzed plant richness and diversity data from 75 sa...

The accumulation of litter or thatch can affect plant community composition by affecting the temperature, nutrient availability, and light availability of the soil environment, thereby forming a potentially important linkage between recent productivity and current ecosystem processes. To investigate the importance of litter on a fen peatland plant community, we conducted a litter addition and r...

We examined the effects of living plant neighbors and litter on the performance of a native C4 grass, Andropogon gerardi, at five old-field sites that differ in community biomass and soil fertility. We used plant removal experiments in which both living neighbors and litter were manipulated in a factorial arrangement of treatments over one growing season. Andropogon was added to treatment plots...

Coexistence theory has often treated environmental heterogeneity as being independent of the community composition; however biotic feedbacks such as plant-soil feedbacks (PSF) have large effects on plant performance, and create environmental heterogeneity that depends on the community composition. Understanding the importance of PSF for plant community assembly necessitates understanding of the...

1. A plant that causes specific changes to soil biota may either positively or negatively affect the performance of the plant that subsequently grows in that location. These effects, known as plant–soil feedback, can affect plant species diversity at multiple spatial scales. 2. It has been hypothesized that positive plant–soil feedback reduces alpha (local) diversity by allowing dominance by ea...

We examined whether the intense root competition in a rough fescue grassland plant community in central Alberta, Canada, was important in structuring plant species diversity or community composition. We measured competition intensity across gradients of species richness, evenness, and community composition, using pairs of naturally occurring plants of 12 species. One plant in each pair was isol...

A growing body of empirical work suggests that soil organisms can exert a strong role in plant community dynamics and may contribute to the coexistence of plant species. Some of this evidence comes from examining the feedback on plant growth through changes in the composition of the soil community. Host specific changes in soil community composition can generate feedback on plant growth and thi...