Ecology 5th Edition by Manuel Molles

Exercise 21

Shaver and Chapin (1986) pointed out that though the tundra ecosystems they studied consistently increased primary production in response to fertilization, individual species and growth forms showed more variation in response. Some species and growth forms showed no response, while others decreased production on the fertilized plots. What do these differences in response say about using the responses of individual species to predict responses at the ecosystem level? What about the reverse-can we predict the responses of individual species or growth forms from ecosystem-level responses?