Browsing by Author "Hilton, Sally"
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Item Open Access Evidence of ecological critical slowing-down in temperate soils(EGU: European Geophysical Union, 2022-05-27) Fraser, Fiona; Corstanje, Ronald; Todman, Lindsay; Bello-Curás, Diana; Bending, Gary; Deeks, Lynda K.; Harris, Jim A.; Hilton, Sally; Pawlett, Mark; Zawadzka, Joanna; Whitmore, Andrew; Ritz, KarlThe resilience of ecological systems is crucially important, particularly in the context of climate change. We present experimental evidence of critical slowing-down arising from perturbation of a key function in a complex ecosystem, exemplified by soil. Different behavioural classes in soil respiratory patterns were detected in response to repeated drying:rewetting cycles. We characterised these as adaptive, resilient, fragile or non-resilient. The latter involved increasing erratic behaviour (i.e. increasing variance), and the propagation of such behaviour (i.e. autocorrelation), interpreted as a critical slowing-down of the observed function. Soil microbial phenotype and land-use were predominantly related to variance and autocorrelation respectively. No relationship was found between biodiversity and resilience, but the ability of a community to be compositionally flexible rather than biodiversity per se appeared to be key to retaining system function. These data were used to map the extent to which soils are close to crossing into alternative stable states at a national scale.Item Open Access Urban meadows as an alternative to short mown grassland: effects of composition and height on biodiversity(Ecological Society of America, 2019-07-22) Norton, Briony A.; Bending, Gary D.; Rachel Clark, Rachel; Corstanje, Ronald; Dunnett, Nigel; Evans, Karl L.; Grafius, Darren R.; Gravestock, Emily; Grice, Samuel M.; Harris, Jim A.; Hilton, Sally; Hoyle, Helen; Lim, Edward; Mercer, Theresa G.; Pawlett, Mark; Pescott, Oliver L.; Richards, J. Paul; Southon, Georgina E.; Warren, Philip H.There are increasing calls to provide greenspace in urban areas, yet the ecological quality, as well as quantity, of greenspace is important. Short mown grassland designed for recreational use is the dominant form of urban greenspace in temperate regions but requires considerable maintenance and typically provides limited habitat value for most taxa. Alternatives are increasingly proposed, but the biodiversity potential of these is not well understood. In a replicated experiment across six public urban greenspaces we used nine different perennial meadow plantings to quantify the relative roles of floristic diversity and height of sown meadows on the richness and composition of three taxonomic groups – plants, invertebrates and soil microbes. We found that all meadow treatments were colonised by plant species not sown in the plots, suggesting that establishing sown meadows does not preclude further locally determined grassland development if management is appropriate. Colonising species were rarer in taller and more diverse plots, indicating competition may limit invasion rates. Urban meadow treatments contained invertebrate and microbial communities that differed from mown grassland. Invertebrate taxa responded to changes in both height and richness of meadow vegetation, but most orders were more abundant where vegetation height was longer than mown grassland. Order richness also increased in longer vegetation and Coleoptera family richness increased with plant diversity in summer. Microbial community composition seems sensitive to plant species composition at the soil surface (0–10 cm), but in deeper soils (11–20 cm) community variation was most responsive to plant height, with bacteria and fungi responding differently. In addition to improving local residents’ satisfaction, native perennial meadow plantings can produce biologically diverse grasslands that support richer and more abundant invertebrate communities, and restructured plant, invertebrate and soil microbial communities compared with short mown grassland. Our results suggest that diversification of urban greenspace by planting urban meadows in place of some mown amenity grassland is likely to generate substantial biodiversity benefits, with a mosaic of meadow types likely to maximise such benefits.