Increasing plant species richness by seeding has marginal effects on ecosystem functioning in agricultural grasslands

Experimental evidence shows that grassland plant diversity enhances ecosystem functioning. Yet, the transfer of results from controlled biodiversity experiments to naturally assembled ‘real world’ ecosystems remains challenging due to environmental variation among sites, confounding biodiversity ecosystem functioning relations in observational studies. To bridge the gap between classical biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments and observational studies of naturally assembled and managed ecosystems, we created regionally replicated, within-site gradients of species richness by seeding across agricultural grasslands differing in land-use intensity (LUI) and abiotic site conditions. Within each of 73 grassland sites, we established a full-factorial experiment with high-diversity seeding and topsoil disturbance and measured 12 ecosystem functions related to productivity, and carbon and nutrient cycling after 4 years. We then analysed the effects of plant diversity (seeded richness as well as realized richness), functional community composition, land use and abiotic conditions on the ecosystem functions within (local scale) as well as among grassland sites (landscape scale). Despite the successful creation of a within-site gradient in plant diversity (average increase in species richness in seeding treatments by 10%–35%), we found that only one to two of the 12 ecosystem functions responded to realized species richness, resulting in more closed nitrogen cycles in more diverse plant communities. Similar results were found when analysing the effect of the seeding treatment instead of realized species richness. Among sites, ecosystem functioning was mostly driven by environmental conditions and LUI. Also here, the only functions related to plant species richness were those associated with a more closed nitrogen cycle under increased diversity. The minor effects of species enrichment we found suggest that the functionally-relevant niche space is largely saturated in naturally assembled grasslands, and that competitive, high-functioning species are already present. Synthesis: While nature conservation and cultural ecosystem services can certainly benefit from plant species enrichment, our study indicates that restoration of plant diversity in naturally assembled communities may deliver only relatively weak increases in ecosystem functioning, such as a more closed nitrogen cycle, within the extensively to moderate intensively managed agricultural grasslands of our study.