Nutrient enrichment typically causes local plant diversity declines. A common but untested expectation is that nutrient enrichment also reduces variation in nutrient conditions among localities and selects for a smaller pool of species, causing greater diversity declines at larger than local scales and thus biotic homogenization. Here we apply a framework that links changes in species richness across scales to changes in the numbers of spatially restricted and widespread species for a standardized nutrient addition experiment across 72 grasslands on six continents. Overall, we find proportionally similar species loss at local and larger scales, suggesting similar declines of spatially restricted and widespread species, and no biotic homogenization after 4 years and up to 14 years of treatment. These patterns of diversity changes are generally consistent across species groups. Thus, nutrient enrichment poses threats to plant diversity, including for widespread species that are often critical for ecosystem functions.

Canadian Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation University of Prince Edward Island St Peter's Bay Charlottetown PE C0A 2A0 Canada

Centre for Applied Ecology 'Prof Baeta Neves' School of Agriculture University of Lisbon Lisbon Portugal

Centre for Ecological Sciences Indian Institute of Science Bangalore India

Centre for Functional Biodiversity School of Life Sciences University of KwaZulu Natal Pietermaritzburg South Africa

Chair of Biodiversity and Nature Tourism Estonian University of Life Sciences Kreutzwaldi 5 51006 Tartu Estonia

Department of Biological Sciences Michigan Technological University Houghton MI 49930 USA

Department of Biological Sciences University of Toronto Scarborough Toronto ON Canada

Department of Biology Texas State University San Marcos TX 78666 USA

Department of Biology University of Prince Edward Island Charlottetown PE Canada

Department of Computer Science Martin Luther University Halle Wittenberg Halle Germany

Department of Ecology Evolution and Behavior University of Minnesota St Paul MN 55108 USA

Department of Entomology University of Maryland College Park MD USA

Department of Environment and Genetics La Trobe University Bundoora VIC 3083 Australia

Department of Environment and Society Utah State University Moab UT USA

Department of Geography King's College London 30 Aldwych London WC2B 4BG UK

Department of Integrative Biology University of Guelph Guelph ON N1G2W1 Canada

Department of Life Sciences Imperial College London Silwood Park Campus Buckhurst Road Ascot SL5 7PY UK

Department of Terrestrial Ecology Netherlands Institute of Ecology Droevedaalsesteeg 10 6708 PB Wageningen The Netherlands

Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center Utah State University Logan UT 84322 USA

Desert Ecology Research Group School of Life and Environmental Sciences ARC Training Centre in Data Analytics for Resources and Environments The University of Sydney Sydney NSW 2006 Australia

Desert Ecology Research Group School of Life and Environmental Sciences The University of Sydney Sydney NSW 2006 Australia

Disturbance Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research University of Bayreuth Bayreuth Germany

Ecology and Biodiversity Group Department of Biology Utrecht University Padualaan 8 3584 CH Utrecht The Netherlands

Ecology and Genetics Unit University of Oulu Oulu Finland

Forest Research Centre Associate Laboratory TERRA School of Agriculture University of Lisbon Lisbon Portugal

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle Jena Leipzig Puschstraße 4 04103 Leipzig Germany

Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment Locked Bag 1797 Penrith NSW 2751 Australia

Health and Environmental Sciences Department Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University Suzhou Jiangsu China

Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research UFZ Department of Physiological Diversity Permoserstrasse 15 04318 Leipzig Germany

Institute of Biology Leipzig University Puschstrasse 4 04103 Leipzig Germany

Institute of Ecology Leuphana University of Lüneburg Universitätsallee 1 21335 Lüneburg Germany

Institute of Hydrobiology Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences Na Sadkach 7 Ceske Budejovice 370 05 Budejovice Czech Republic

Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a La Agricultura Facultad de Agronomía Universidad de Buenos Aires and CONICET Buenos Aires Argentina

Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras UNMdP CONICET CC 1260 Correo Central B7600WAG Mar Del Plata Argentina

Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria CONICET Río Gallegos Santa Cruz Argentina

Lancaster Environment Centre Lancaster University Lancaster LA1 4YQ UK

Mammal Research Institute Department of Zoology and Entomology University of Pretoria Pretoria South Africa

Martin Luther University Halle Wittenberg Am Kirchtor 1 06108 Halle Germany

School of Climate Change and Adaptation University of Prince Edward Island Charlottetown PE C1A 4P3 Canada

School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences University of Melbourne Parkville VIC 3010 Australia

School of Environmental and Forest Sciences University of Washington Seattle WA USA

Senckenberg Museum for Natural History Görlitz D 02826 Görlitz Germany

Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL Zuercherstrasse 111 8903 Birmensdorf Switzerland

University of California Santa Barbara Santa Barbara CA 93106 USA

University of Nebraska Lincoln Lincoln NE USA

Vrije Universiteit Brussel Department Biology WILD Pleinlaan 2 1050 Brussels Belgium

Zoology School of Natural Sciences Trinity College Dublin Dublin Ireland

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Sardans, J. & Peñuelas, J. Potassium: a neglected nutrient in global change. DOI

Galloway, J. N., Bleeker, A. & Erisman, J. W. The human creation and use of reactive nitrogen: a global and regional perspective. DOI

Yuan, Z. et al. Human perturbation of the global phosphorus cycle: changes and consequences. PubMed DOI

Bobbink, R. et al. Global assessment of nitrogen deposition effects on terrestrial plant diversity: a synthesis. PubMed DOI

Seabloom, E. W. et al. Increasing effects of chronic nutrient enrichment on plant diversity loss and ecosystem productivity over time. PubMed DOI

Suding, K. N. et al. Functional- and abundance-based mechanisms explain diversity loss due to N fertilization. PubMed DOI PMC

Yang, Z., Hautier, Y., Borer, E. T., Zhang, C. & Du, G. Abundance- and functional-based mechanisms of plant diversity loss with fertilization in the presence and absence of herbivores. PubMed DOI

Zhang, P. et al. Space resource utilization of dominant species integrates abundance- and functional-based processes for better predictions of plant diversity dynamics. DOI

MacDougall, A. S. et al. The neolithic plant invasion hypothesis: the role of preadaptation and disturbance in grassland invasion. PubMed DOI

Seabloom, E. W. et al. Plant species’ origin predicts dominance and response to nutrient enrichment and herbivores in global grasslands. PubMed DOI PMC

Tognetti, P. M. et al. Negative effects of nitrogen override positive effects of phosphorus on grassland legumes worldwide. PubMed PMC

Blowes, S. A. et al. Synthesis reveals approximately balanced biotic differentiation and homogenization. PubMed DOI PMC

Keil, P. et al. Spatial scaling of extinction rates: theory and data reveal nonlinearity and a major upscaling and downscaling challenge. DOI

Chase, J. M. et al. Species richness change across spatial scales. DOI

Daleo, P. et al. Environmental heterogeneity modulates the effect of plant diversity on the spatial variability of grassland biomass. PubMed DOI PMC

Le Provost, G. et al. The supply of multiple ecosystem services requires biodiversity across spatial scales. PubMed DOI

Daru, B. H. et al. Widespread homogenization of plant communities in the Anthropocene. PubMed DOI PMC

Gossner, M. M. et al. Land-use intensification causes multitrophic homogenization of grassland communities. PubMed DOI

Staude, I. R. et al. Replacements of small- by large-ranged species scale up to diversity loss in Europe’s temperate forest biome. PubMed DOI

McKinney, M. L. & Lockwood, J. L. Biotic homogenization: a few winners replacing many losers in the next mass extinction. PubMed DOI

Chen, Q. et al. Long‐term cross‐scale comparison of grazing and mowing on plant diversity and community composition in a salt‐marsh system. DOI

Huston, M. A general hypothesis of species diversity. DOI

Tilman, D.

Seabloom, E. W. et al. Species loss due to nutrient addition increases with spatial scale in global grasslands. PubMed DOI

Chalcraft, D. R. et al. Scale-dependent responses of plant biodiversity to nitrogen enrichment. PubMed DOI

Lu, W. et al. Similar effects of seasonal nitrogen enrichment on plant species–area relationship in a temperate grassland. DOI

Chen, Q. et al. Nutrients and herbivores impact grassland stability across spatial scales through different pathways. PubMed DOI

Zhou, X., Liu, X., Zhang, P., Guo, Z. & Du, G. Increased community compositional dissimilarity alleviates species loss following nutrient enrichment at large spatial scales. DOI

DeSiervo, M. H., Sullivan, L. L., Kahan, L. M., Seabloom, E. W. & Shoemaker, L. G. Disturbance alters transience but nutrients determine equilibria during grassland succession with multiple global change drivers. PubMed DOI

Eskelinen, A. & Harrison, S. Erosion of beta diversity under interacting global change impacts in a semi-arid grassland. DOI

Inouye, R. S. & Tilman, D. Convergence and divergence of old-field vegetation after 11 yr of nitrogen addition. DOI

Zhang, Y. et al. Nitrogen addition does not reduce the role of spatial asynchrony in stabilising grassland communities. PubMed DOI PMC

Foster, B. L. et al. Seed availability constrains plant species sorting along a soil fertility gradient. DOI

Koerner, S. E. et al. Nutrient additions cause divergence of tallgrass prairie plant communities resulting in loss of ecosystem stability. DOI

Lan, Z. et al. Testing the scaling effects and mechanisms of N-induced biodiversity loss: evidence from a decade-long grassland experiment. DOI

Xu, Z. et al. Antithetical effects of nitrogen and water availability on community similarity of semiarid grasslands: evidence from a nine-year manipulation experiment. DOI

Yang, X. et al. Resource addition drives taxonomic divergence and phylogenetic convergence of plant communities. DOI

Whittaker, R. H. Vegetation of the Siskiyou Mountains, Oregon and California. DOI

Borer, E. T. et al. Finding generality in ecology: a model for globally distributed experiments. DOI

Chase, J. M. & Leibold, M. A. Spatial scale dictates the productivity-biodiversity relationship. PubMed DOI

Seabloom, E. W. et al. Predicting invasion in grassland ecosystems: is exotic dominance the real embarrassment of richness? PubMed DOI

Staude, I. R. et al. Directional turnover towards larger-ranged plants over time and across habitats. PubMed DOI

Chase, J. M. et al. Embracing scale‐dependence to achieve a deeper understanding of biodiversity and its change across communities. PubMed DOI

Getis, A. A history of the concept of spatial autocorrelation: a geographer’s perspective. DOI

Kruschke, J. K. Bayesian estimation supersedes the t test. PubMed DOI

Bürkner, P.-C. Advanced Bayesian multilevel modeling with the R Package brms. DOI

R Core Team.

Jost, L. Entropy and diversity. DOI

Oksanen, A. J. et al. Package ‘ vegan’. (2019).

Hill, M. O. Diversity and evenness: a unifying notation and its consequences. DOI

Borer, E. T. et al. Nutrients cause grassland biomass to outpace herbivory. PubMed DOI PMC

Anderson, T. M. et al. Herbivory and eutrophication mediate grassland plant nutrient responses across a global climatic gradient. PubMed DOI

Van Sundert, K. et al. Towards comparable assessment of the soil nutrient status across scales—review and development of nutrient metrics. PubMed DOI