Markus Lange

TL;DR: It is shown that higher plant diversity increases rhizosphere carbon inputs into the microbial community resulting in both increased microbial activity and carbon storage, indicating that the increase in carbon storage is mainly limited by the integration of new carbon into soil and less by the decomposition of existing soil carbon.

TL;DR: It is shown that plant diversity effects dampen with increasing trophic level and degree of omnivory, and the results suggest that plant Diversity has strong bottom-up effects on multitrophic interaction networks, with particularly strong effects on lower trophIC levels.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that primary producers, herbivorous insects and microbial decomposers seem to be particularly important drivers of ecosystem functioning, as shown by the strong and frequent positive associations of their richness or abundance with multiple ecosystem services.

TL;DR: It is shown that even moderate increases in local land-use intensity (LUI) cause biotic homogenization across microbial, plant and animal groups, both above- and belowground, and that this is largely independent of changes in α-diversity.

TL;DR: The results from the Jena Experiment provide further evidence that diversity begets stability, for example stability against invasion of plant species, but unexpectedly some results also suggested the opposite, e.g. when plant communities experience severe perturbations or elevated resource availability.