Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35833986›Full record

ArticleOecologia2022

Richness, not evenness, varies across water availability gradients in grassy biomes on five continents.

Melinda D Smith, Sally E Koerner, Meghan L Avolio, Kimberly J Komatsu, Stephanie Eby, Elisabeth J Forrestel, Scott L Collins, Kevin R Wilcox, Rodrigo Ahumada, John W Morgan and 9 more

Abstract read
PubMed Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Oecologia, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Interactions among nutrients govern the global grassland biomass-precipitation relationship.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

19 authors.

Melinda D SmithDepartment of Biology, Colorado State University, 251 W. Pitkin Street, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA. Melinda.smith@colostate.edu.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4920-6985
Sally E KoernerDepartment of Biology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, 27402, USA.
Meghan L AvolioMorton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.
Kimberly J KomatsuSmithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, 21037, USA.
Stephanie EbyDepartment of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
Elisabeth J ForrestelDepartment of Viticulture and Enology, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA.
Scott L CollinsDepartment of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA.
Kevin R WilcoxDepartment of Ecosystem Science and Management, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, 82071, USA.
Rodrigo AhumadaInstituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Catamarca, 4705, Catamarca, Argentina.
John W MorganDepartment of Ecology, Environment and Evolution, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia.
Gabriel OlivaInstituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Santa Cruz, Z9400, Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Argentina.
Gastón R OñatibiaInstituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA-CONICET), Cátedra de Ecología, Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Av. San Martín 4453 (C1417DSE), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Gerhard E OverbeckDepartment of Botany, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, RS, 91501-970, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Guadalupe PeterUniversidad Nacional de Río Negro, CONICET CEANPa, Viedma, Río Negro, Argentina.
Emiliano QuirogaInstituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Catamarca, 4705, Catamarca, Argentina.
Mahesh SankaranNational Centre for Biological Sciences, TIFR, Bellary Road, Bengaluru, 560065, India.
Jianshuang WuInstitute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China.
Laura YahdjianInstituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA-CONICET), Cátedra de Ecología, Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Av. San Martín 4453 (C1417DSE), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Qiang YuSchool of Grassland Science, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, China.

Funding

Directorate for Biological Sciences DEB-1354732National Institute of Food and Agriculture 2018-67013-27400
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

We sought to understand the role that water availability (expressed as an aridity index) plays in determining regional and global patterns of richness and evenness, and in turn how these water availability-diversity relationships may result in different richness-evenness relationships at regional and global scales. We examined relationships between water availability, richness and evenness for eight grassy biomes spanning broad water availability gradients on five continents. Our study found that relationships between richness and water availability switched from positive for drier (South Africa, Tibet and USA) vs. negative for wetter (India) biomes, though were not significant for the remaining biomes. In contrast, only the India biome showed a significant relationship between water availability and evenness, which was negative. Globally, the richness-water availability relationship was hump-shaped, however, not significant for evenness. At the regional scale, a positive richness-evenness relationship was found for grassy biomes in India and Inner Mongolia, China. In contrast, this relationship was weakly concave-up globally. These results suggest that different, independent factors are determining patterns of species richness and evenness in grassy biomes, resulting in differing richness-evenness relationships at regional and global scales. As a consequence, richness and evenness may respond very differently across spatial gradients to anthropogenic changes, such as climate change.

Indexed as

BiodiversityPoaceaeChinaEcosystemWaterWaterClimateDiversityGrasslandsPlant species richnessPrecipitation

Identifiers

What OpenQuestion holds

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Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.