@article {KNZ001830,
	title = {Species reordering, not changes in richness, drives long-term dynamics in grassland communities},
	journal = {Ecology Letters},
	volume = {20},
	year = {2017},
	pages = {1565},
	chapter = {1556},
	abstract = {<p>Determining how ecological communities will respond to global environmental change remains a challenging research problem. Recent meta-analyses concluded that most communities are undergoing compositional change despite no net change in local species richness. We explored how species richness and composition of co-occurring plant, grasshopper, breeding bird and small mammal communities in arid and mesic grasslands changed in response to increasing aridity and fire frequency. In the arid system, grassland and shrubland plant and breeding bird communities were undergoing directional change, whereas grasshopper and small mammal communities were stable. In the mesic system, all communities were undergoing directional change regardless of fire frequency. Despite directional change in composition in some communities, species richness of all communities did not change because compositional change resulted more from reordering of species abundances than turnover in species composition. Thus, species reordering, not changes in richness, explains long-term dynamics in these grass and shrub dominated communities.</p>},
	keywords = {LTER-KNZ, Community dynamics, desert grassland, desert shrubland, fire; species reordering, Species richness, tallgrass prairie},
	doi = {10.1111/ele.12864},
	url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ele.12864},
	author = {Jones, Sydney K. and Ripplinger, Julie and Scott. L. Collins},
	editor = {Coulson, Tim}
}
@article {KNZ001744,
	title = {Altered rainfall patterns increase forb abundance and richness in native tallgrass prairie},
	journal = {Scientific Reports},
	year = {2016},
	abstract = {<p>Models predict that precipitation variability will increase with climate change. We used a 15-year precipitation manipulation experiment to determine if altering the timing and amount of growing season rainfall will impact plant community structure in annually burned, native tallgrass prairie. The altered precipitation treatment maintained the same total growing season precipitation as the ambient precipitation treatment, but received a rainfall regime of fewer, larger rain events, and longer intervals between events each growing season. Although this change in precipitation regime significantly lowered mean soil water content, overall this plant community was remarkably resistant to altered precipitation with species composition relatively stable over time. However, we found significantly higher forb cover and richness and slightly lower grass cover on average with altered precipitation, but the forb responses were manifest only after a ten-year lag period. Thus, although community structure in this grassland is relatively resistant to this type of altered precipitation regime, forb abundance in native tallgrass prairie may increase in a future characterized by increased growing season precipitation variability.</p>},
	keywords = {LTER-KNZ},
	doi = {10.1038/srep20120},
	url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20120},
	author = {Jones, Sydney K. and Scott. L. Collins and John M. Blair and M.D. Smith and Alan K. Knapp}
}
