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Journal of Plant Ecology Advance Access published online on May 5, 2008
Journal of Plant Ecology, doi:10.1093/jpe/rtn011
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Botanical Society of China. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Biodiversity effects and transgressive overyielding

Bernhard Schmid1,*, Andy Hector1, Prasenjit Saha2 and Michel Loreau3

1 Institute of Environmental Sciences, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
2 Physics Institute, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
3 Department of Biology, McGill University, 1205 ave Docteur Penfield, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1B1

* Correspondence address. Institute of Environmental Sciences, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland. Tel: +41-44-635-5205; Fax: +41-44-635-5711; E-mail: bernhard.schmid{at}uwinst.uzh.ch

Aims: The potential for mixtures of plant species to produce more biomass than every one of their constituent species in monoculture is still controversially discussed in the literature. Here we tested how this so-called transgressive overyielding is affected by variation between and within species in monoculture yields in biodiversity experiments.

Methods: We use basic statistical principles to calculate expected maximum monoculture yield in a species pool used for a biodiversity experiment. Using a real example we show how between- and within-species variance components in monoculture yields can be obtained. Combining the two components we estimate the importance of sampling bias in transgressive overyielding analysis.

Important Findings: The net biodiversity effect (difference between mixture and average monoculture yield) needed to achieve transgressive overyielding increases with the number of species in a mixture and with the variation between constituent species in monoculture yields. If there is no significant variation between species, transgressive overyielding should not be calculated using the best monoculture, because in this case the difference between this species and the other species could exclusively reflect a sampling bias. The sampling bias decreases with increasing variation between species. Tests for transgressive overyielding require replicated species’ monocultures. However, it can be doubted whether such an emphasis on monocultures in biodiversity experiments is justified if an analysis of transgressive overyielding is not the major goal.

Keywords: biodiversity experiments • mixtures • monocultures • overyielding analysis • sampling bias


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