Wednesday, August 8, 2018: 4:00 PM
252, New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
Caroline A. Havrilla1, Anita Antoninka2, Jayne Belnap3, Matthew Bowker2, Bala Chaudhary4, David J. Eldridge5, Akasha Faist6, Scott Ferrenberg7, Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald8, Alexander D. Leslie9, Fernando T. Maestre10, Yuanming Zhang11 and Nichole N. Barger9, (1)Southwest Biological Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ, (2)School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, (3)Southwest Biological Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Moab, UT, (4)Department of Environmental Science and Studies, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, (5)Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth, and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia, (6)Department of Animal and Range Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, (7)Department of Biology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, (8)División de Ciencias Ambientales, Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, A.C., San Luis Potosí, SL, Mexico, (9)Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, (10)Departamento de Biologia y Geologia, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Mostoles, Spain, (11)Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, China
Background/Question/Methods Biological soil crusts (“biocrusts”), soil microbial communities comprised of cyanobacteria, lichens, bryophytes, and fungi, coexist in patchy mosaics with vascular plants worldwide. Biocrusts are often hypothesized to positively affect vascular plant performance via influences on soil hydrology, stability, and fertility. Yet the nature of biocrust-plant interactions and the factors modifying their outcomes remain uncertain as studies report positive, neutral, and negative outcomes. Using mixed-factor meta-regression and boosted regression tree (BRT) models, we conducted a meta-analysis of biocrust-plant interactions using a global data set encompassing 1,004 studies. We assessed the relative influence of biocrusts on the overall performance, germination, survival, growth, and cover of vascular plants in relation to commonly reported biocrust, plant, and environmental factors.
Results/Conclusions
Overall, biocrusts increased plant growth, but neutrally or negatively affected plant germination, survival, cover, and overall performance. However, interactions were clearly context-dependent with biocrust community type, plant functional group, plant nativeness, and study control influencing the directionality of responses. Context-dependency of biocrust-plant interactions has broad implications for plant community assembly, structure, and management.
