ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Assessing the roles of nitrogen, biomass, and niche dimensionality as drivers of species loss in grassland communities.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- Critical thresholds for co-benefits of carbon accumulation and biodiversity conservation under global nitrogen enrichment.Nature communications · 2026Pooled it
- Divergent resource limitations of belowground versus aboveground productivity across grasslands.Nature communications · 2025Pooled it
- A global meta-analysis on the effects of organic and inorganic fertilization on grasslands and croplands.Nature communications · 2024Pooled it
- Prolonged Nutrient Enrichment Slows the Recovery of Biodiversity and Productivity After Its Cessation.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Opposing effects of increasing numbers of added resources on producer richness but not biomass in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.Fundamental research · 2026Article
- Fertilization and herbivore exclusion promote more deterministic processes in plant community assembly on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.Oecologia · 2026Article
- Nitrogen Management in Crop-Soil-Environment Systems: Pathways Toward Sustainable and Climate-Resilient Agriculture.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Social and structural traits influence species gains while resources influence species losses in a native grassland.Ecology · 2026Article
- A general framework for nitrogen deposition effects on soil respiration in global forests.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Rare species facilitate partial recovery of plant diversity after decade-long nitrogen addition.Oecologia · 2025Article
- Trait-Mediated Competition for Light Underpins Plant Diversity Loss Under Eutrophication.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Labile Carbon Input Mitigates the Negative Legacy Effects of Nitrogen Addition on Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis in a Temperate Grassland.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Reseeding Native Species Promotes Community Stability by Improving Species Diversity, Niche, and Interspecific Relationships in the Desert Steppe of Northwest China.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Trade-off between pollinator-wildflower diversity & grassland yields.npj biodiversity · 2025Article
- High CONature · 2024Article
- Effects of short-term nitrogen addition on the recovery of alpine grassland in the Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang, China.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Water limitation drives species loss in grassland communities after nitrogen addition and warming.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Explaining the mechanisms behind niche dimensionality and light-driving species diversity based on functional traits.npj biodiversity · 2024Article
- Article
- Effects of Short-Term Nitrogen Additions on Biomass and Soil Phytochemical Cycling in Alpine Grasslands of Tianshan, China.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Eutrophication is a major driver of species loss in plant communities worldwide. However, the underlying mechanisms of this phenomenon are controversial. Previous studies have raised three main explanations: 1) High levels of soil resources increase standing biomass, thereby intensifying competitive interactions (the “biomass-driven competition hypothesis”). 2) High levels of soil resources reduce the potential for resource-based niche partitioning (the “niche dimension hypothesis”). 3) Increasing soil nitrogen causes stress by changing the abiotic or biotic conditions (the “nitrogen detriment hypothesis”). Despite several syntheses of resource addition experiments, so far, no study has tested all of the hypotheses together. This is a major shortcoming, since the mechanisms underlying the three hypotheses are not independent. Here, we conduct a simultaneous test of the three hypotheses by integrating data from 630 resource addition experiments located in 99 sites worldwide. Our results provide strong support for the nitrogen detriment hypothesis, weaker support for the biomass-driven competition hypothesis, and negligible support for the niche dimension hypothesis. The results further show that the indirect effect of nitrogen through its effect on biomass is minor compared to its direct effect and is much larger than that of all other resources (phosphorus, potassium, and water). Thus, we conclude that nitrogen-specific mechanisms are more important than biomass or niche dimensionality as drivers of species loss under high levels of soil resources. This conclusion is highly relevant for future attempts to reduce biodiversity loss caused by global eutrophication.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.