Université de Fribourg

Including community composition in biodiversity–productivity models

Sandau, Nadine ; Rohr, Rudolf P. ; Naisbit, Russell E. ; Fabian, Yvonne ; Bruggisser, Odile T. ; Kehrli, Patrik ; Aebi, Alexandre ; Bersier, Louis-Félix

In: Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2014, vol. 5, no. 8, p. 815–823

Studies on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) have elicited debate over the interpretation of the positive relationship between species richness and plant productivity. Manipulating richness cannot be achieved without affecting composition; it is thus essential to consider the latter in statistical models.We firstly review existing approaches that use species richness as an explanatory...

Université de Fribourg

Plant diversity in a nutshell: testing for small-scale effects on trap nesting wild bees and wasps

Fabian, Yvonne ; Sandau, Nadine ; Bruggisser, Odile T. ; Aebi, Alexandre ; Kehrli, Patrik ; Rohr, Rudolf P. ; Naisbit, Russell E. ; Bersier, Louis-Félix

In: Ecosphere, 2014, vol. 5, no. 2, p. art18

Declining plant species richness in agro-ecosystems and thus reduced habitat quality can have cascading effects on ecosystem functioning, leading to reduced pollination and biological control. Here we test if plant diversity can affect arthropod diversity and abundance on a very small scale, manipulating plant species richness (2, 6, 12 and 20 sown species) in small adjacent subplots (6 × 9 m)...

Université de Fribourg

Phylogenetic signal in predator–prey body-size relationships

Naisbit, Russell E. ; Kehrli, Patrik ; Rohr, Rudolf Philippe ; Bersier, Louis-Félix

In: Ecology, 2011, vol. 92, no. 12, p. 2183–2189

Body mass is a fundamental characteristic that affects metabolism, life history, and population abundance and frequently sets bounds on who eats whom in food webs. Based on a collection of topological food webs, Ulrich Brose and colleagues presented a general relationship between the body mass of predators and their prey and analyzed how mean predator–prey body-mass ratios differed among...