The supply of multiple ecosystem services requires biodiversity across spatial scales.

The impact of local biodiversity loss on ecosystem functioning is well established, but the role of larger-scale biodiversity dynamics in the delivery of ecosystem services remains poorly understood. Here we address this gap using a comprehensive dataset describing the supply of 16 cultural, regulating and provisioning ecosystem services in 150 European agricultural grassland plots, and detailed multi-scale data on land use and plant diversity. After controlling for land-use and abiotic factors, we show that both plot-level and surrounding plant diversity play an important role in the supply of cultural and aboveground regulating ecosystem services. In contrast, provisioning and belowground regulating ecosystem services are more strongly driven by field-level management and abiotic factors. Structural equation models revealed that surrounding plant diversity promotes ecosystem services both directly, probably by fostering the spill-over of ecosystem service providers from surrounding areas, and indirectly, by maintaining plot-level diversity. By influencing the ecosystem services that local stakeholders prioritized, biodiversity at different scales was also shown to positively influence a wide range of stakeholder groups. These results provide a comprehensive picture of which ecosystem services rely most strongly on biodiversity, and the respective scales of biodiversity that drive these services. This key information is required for the upscaling of biodiversity-ecosystem service relationships, and the informed management of biodiversity within agricultural landscapes.

Above- and belowground biodiversity jointly tighten the P cycle in agricultural grasslands.

Experiments showed that biodiversity increases grassland productivity and nutrient exploitation, potentially reducing fertiliser needs. Enhancing biodiversity could improve P-use efficiency of grasslands, which is beneficial given that rock-derived P fertilisers are expected to become scarce in the future. Here, we show in a biodiversity experiment that more diverse plant communities were able to exploit P resources more completely than less diverse ones. In the agricultural grasslands that we studied, management effects either overruled or modified the driving role of plant diversity observed in the biodiversity experiment. Nevertheless, we show that greater above- (plants) and belowground (mycorrhizal fungi) biodiversity contributed to tightening the P cycle in agricultural grasslands, as reduced management intensity and the associated increased biodiversity fostered the exploitation of P resources. Our results demonstrate that promoting a high above- and belowground biodiversity has ecological (biodiversity protection) and economical (fertiliser savings) benefits. Such win-win situations for farmers and biodiversity are crucial to convince farmers of the benefits of biodiversity and thus counteract global biodiversity loss.

Contrasting responses of above- and belowground diversity to multiple components of land-use intensity.

Land-use intensification is a major driver of biodiversity loss. However, understanding how different components of land use drive biodiversity loss requires the investigation of multiple trophic levels across spatial scales. Using data from 150 agricultural grasslands in central Europe, we assess the influence of multiple components of local- and landscape-level land use on more than 4,000 above- and belowground taxa, spanning 20 trophic groups. Plot-level land-use intensity is strongly and negatively associated with aboveground trophic groups, but positively or not associated with belowground trophic groups. Meanwhile, both above- and belowground trophic groups respond to landscape-level land use, but to different drivers: aboveground diversity of grasslands is promoted by diverse surrounding land-cover, while belowground diversity is positively related to a high permanent forest cover in the surrounding landscape. These results highlight a role of landscape-level land use in shaping belowground communities, and suggest that revised agroecosystem management strategies are needed to conserve whole-ecosystem biodiversity.

Changes in plant-herbivore network structure and robustness along land-use intensity gradients in grasslands and forests.

Land-use intensification poses major threats to biodiversity, such as to insect herbivore communities. The stability of these communities depends on interactions linking herbivores and host plants. How interaction network structure begets robustness, and thus stability, in different ecosystems and how network structure and robustness are altered along land-use intensity gradients are unclear. We analyzed plant-herbivore networks based on literature-derived interactions and long-term sampling from 289 grasslands and forests in three regions of Germany. Network size and nestedness were the most important determinants of network robustness in both ecosystems. Along land-use intensity gradients, networks in moderately grazed grasslands were more robust than in those managed by frequent mowing or fertilization. In forests, changes of network robustness along land-use intensity gradients relied on changes in plant species richness. Our results expand our knowledge of the stability of plant-herbivore networks and indicate options for management aimed at stabilizing herbivore communities.

The results of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments are realistic.

A large body of research shows that biodiversity loss can reduce ecosystem functioning. However, much of the evidence for this relationship is drawn from biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments in which biodiversity loss is simulated by randomly assembling communities of varying species diversity, and ecosystem functions are measured. This random assembly has led some ecologists to question the relevance of biodiversity experiments to real-world ecosystems, where community assembly or disassembly may be non-random and influenced by external drivers, such as climate, soil conditions or land use. Here, we compare data from real-world grassland plant communities with data from two of the largest and longest-running grassland biodiversity experiments (the Jena Experiment in Germany and BioDIV in the United States) in terms of their taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity and functional-trait composition. We found that plant communities of biodiversity experiments cover almost all of the multivariate variation of the real-world communities, while also containing community types that are not currently observed in the real world. Moreover, they have greater variance in their compositional features than their real-world counterparts. We then re-analysed a subset of experimental data that included only ecologically realistic communities (that is, those comparable to real-world communities). For 10 out of 12 biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships, biodiversity effects did not differ significantly between the full dataset of biodiversity experiments and the ecologically realistic subset of experimental communities. Although we do not provide direct evidence for strong or consistent biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships in real-world communities, our results demonstrate that the results of biodiversity experiments are largely insensitive to the exclusion of unrealistic communities and that the conclusions drawn from biodiversity experiments are generally robust.

Plant species richness increases with light availability, but not variability, in temperate forests understorey.

BACKGROUND: Temperate forest understorey vegetation poses an excellent study system to investigate whether increases in resource availability lead to an increase in plant species richness. Most sunlight is absorbed by the species-poor tree canopy, making the much more species-rich understorey species inhabit a severely resource-limited habitat. Additionally, the heterogeneity of light availability, resulting from management-moderated tree composition and age structure, may contribute to species coexistence. One would therefore expect that the diversity in the herb layer correlates positively with either the overall light availability, or the light heterogeneity, depending on whether resource availability or heterogeneity are more important drivers of diversity. To test this idea, we assessed variability of light conditions in 75 forest plots across three ecoregions with four different methods. RESULTS: We correlated these data with vegetation relevés and found light availability to be strongly positively correlated with understorey plant species richness, as well as with understorey cover. Light variability (assessed with two approaches) within plots was positively correlated with transmittance, but did not improve the relationship further, suggesting that the main driver of species richness in this system is the overall resource availability. Two of the three beech-dominated regions exhibited near-identical effects of light transmittance, while the third, featuring pine alongside beech and thus with the longest gradient of transmittance and lowest species richness, displayed a weaker light response. CONCLUSIONS: While site conditions are certainly responsible for the trees selected by foresters, for the resulting forest structure, and for the differences in plant species pools, our results suggest that light transmittance is a strong mediating factor of understorey plant species richness.

Exclusion of large herbivores affects understorey shrub vegetation more than herb vegetation across 147 forest sites in three German regions.

BACKGROUND: Many studies have analysed the effect of browsing by large herbivores on tree species but far fewer studies have studied their effect on understorey shrubs and herbs. Moreover, while many studies have shown that forest features and management intensity strongly influence understorey vegetation, the influence of such variation on the effect of large-herbivore exclusion is not known. THIS STUDY: In this study, we analysed changes of species richness, Shannon diversity, evenness and cover of understorey herbs and shrubs after excluding large herbivores for seven years on 147 forest sites, differing in management intensity and forest features, in three regions of Germany (Schwäbische Alb, Hainich-Dün, Schorfheide-Chorin). Further, we studied how the effect of large-herbivore exclusion on understorey vegetation was influenced by forest management intensity and several forest features. RESULTS: As expected, exclusion of large herbivores resulted in highly variable results. Nevertheless, we found that large-herbivore exclusion significantly increased cover and Shannon diversity of shrub communities, while it did not affect herb communities. Forest management intensity did not influence the effect of large-herbivore exclusion while some forest features, most often relative conifer cover, did. In forests with high relative conifer cover, large-herbivore exclusion decreased species richness and cover of herbs and increased Shannon diversity of herbs and shrubs, while in forests with low relative conifer cover large-herbivore exclusion increased species richness and cover of herbs, and decreased Shannon diversity of herbs and shrubs. CONCLUSION: We suggest that browsing by large herbivores should be included when studying understorey shrub communities, however when studying understorey herb communities the effects of browsing are less general and depend on forest features.

Direct and indirect effects of land-use intensification on ant communities in temperate grasslands.

Land-use intensification is a major driver of local species extinction and homogenization. Temperate grasslands, managed at low intensities over centuries harbored a high species diversity, which is increasingly threatened by the management intensification over the last decades. This includes key taxa like ants. However, the underlying mechanisms leading to a decrease in ant abundance and species richness as well as changes in functional community composition are not well understood. We sampled ants on 110 grassland plots in three regions in Germany. The sampled grasslands are used as meadows or pastures, being mown, grazed or fertilized at different intensities. We analyzed the effect of the different aspects of land use on ant species richness, functional trait spaces, and community composition by using a multimodel inference approach and structural equation models. Overall, we found 31 ant species belonging to 8 genera, mostly open habitat specialists. Ant species richness, functional trait space of communities, and abundance of nests decreased with increasing land-use intensity. The land-use practice most harmful to ants was mowing, followed by heavy grazing by cattle. Fertilization did not strongly affect ant species richness. Grazing by sheep increased the ant species richness. The effect of mowing differed between species and was strongly negative for Formica species while Myrmica and common Lasius species were less affected. Rare species occurred mainly in plots managed at low intensity. Our results show that mowing less often or later in the season would retain a higher ant species richness-similarly to most other grassland taxa. The transformation from (sheep) pastures to intensively managed meadows and especially mowing directly affects ants via the destruction of nests and indirectly via loss of grassland heterogeneity (reduced plant species richness) and increased soil moisture by shading of fast-growing plant species.

Land use intensity, rather than plant species richness, affects the leaching risk of multiple nutrients from permanent grasslands.

The intensification of land use constitutes one of the main drivers of global change and alters nutrient fluxes on all spatial scales, causing landscape-level eutrophication and contamination of natural resources. Changes in soil nutrient concentrations are thus indicative for crucial environmental issues associated with intensive land use. We measured concentrations of NO3 -N, NH4 -N, P, K, Mg, and Ca using 1,326 ion-exchange resin bags buried in 20 cm depth beneath the main root zone in 150 temperate grasslands. Nutrient concentrations were related to land use intensity, that is, fertilization, mowing, grazing intensities, and plant diversity by structural equation modeling. Furthermore, we assessed the response of soil nutrients to mechanical sward disturbance and subsequent reseeding, a common practice for grassland renewal. Land use intensity, especially fertilization, significantly increased the concentrations of NO3 -N, NH4 -N, K, P, and also Mg. Besides fertilization (and tightly correlated mowing) intensity, grazing strongly increased NO3 -N and K concentrations. Plant species richness decreased P and NO3 -N concentrations in soil when grassland productivity of the actual year was statistically taken into account, but not when long-term averages of productivity were used. Thus, we assume that, in the actual study year, a distinct drought period might have caused the observed decoupling of productivity from fertilization and soil nutrients. Breaking up the grassland sward drastically increased NO3 -N concentrations (+146%) but reduced NH4 -N, P, and K concentrations, unbalancing soil nutrient stoichiometry and boosting the risk of N leaching. Reseeding the sward after disturbance did not have a short-term effect on nutrient concentrations. We conclude that renewal of permanent grassland should be avoided as far as possible and future grassland management has to strongly rise the effectiveness of fertilization. Additionally, grassland management might have to increasingly taking care of periods of drought, in which nutrient additions might not increase plant growth but potentially only facilitate leaching.

Nutrient stoichiometry and land use rather than species richness determine plant functional diversity.

Plant functional traits reflect individual and community ecological strategies. They allow the detection of directional changes in community dynamics and ecosystemic processes, being an additional tool to assess biodiversity than species richness. Analysis of functional patterns in plant communities provides mechanistic insight into biodiversity alterations due to anthropogenic activity. Although studies have consi-dered of either anthropogenic management or nutrient availability on functional traits in temperate grasslands, studies combining effects of both drivers are scarce. Here, we assessed the impacts of management intensity (fertilization, mowing, grazing), nutrient stoichiometry (C, N, P, K), and vegetation composition on community-weighted means (CWMs) and functional diversity (Rao's Q) from seven plant traits in 150 grasslands in three regions in Germany, using data of 6 years. Land use and nutrient stoichiometry accounted for larger proportions of model variance of CWM and Rao's Q than species richness and productivity. Grazing affected all analyzed trait groups; fertilization and mowing only impacted generative traits. Grazing was clearly associated with nutrient retention strategies, that is, investing in durable structures and production of fewer, less variable seed. Phenological variability was increased. Fertilization and mowing decreased seed number/mass variability, indicating competition-related effects. Impacts of nutrient stoichiometry on trait syndromes varied. Nutrient limitation (large N:P, C:N ratios) promoted species with conservative strategies, that is, investment in durable plant structures rather than fast growth, fewer seed, and delayed flowering onset. In contrast to seed mass, leaf-economics variability was reduced under P shortage. Species diversity was positively associated with the variability of generative traits. Synthesis. Here, land use, nutrient availability, species richness, and plant functional strategies have been shown to interact complexly, driving community composition, and vegetation responses to management intensity. We suggest that deeper understanding of underlying mechanisms shaping community assembly and biodiversity will require analyzing all these parameters.

Clinical nurse specialists driving research and practice through Research Roundtables.

Providing patient care based on the best evidence is a priority for healthcare institutions across the country to improve practice and patient outcomes. Creating a culture of evidence-based practice (EBP) within an organization can be a challenging task. Literature has identified numerous barriers to EBP including negative attitudes and perceptions among nurses and lack of organizational support, time, resources, and confidence with these skills. Creating programs that help nurses appreciate the value and importance of nursing research for practice can be an effective approach in changing the culture. Research Roundtable is a collaborative partnership between a healthcare system and a baccalaureate nursing program to promote EBP and research skills in nurses and nursing students. Initial goals of the program focused on increasing the nurses' knowledge base of the research process and applying research to actual clinical problems. Over the course of 3 years, Roundtable evolved from development and implementation of research projects to concentrating on the identification of clinical problems that could be analyzed and solved through the use of EBP processes. The program has resulted in the completion of research studies, implementation of practice changes based on evidence uncovered in group work, and the approval of research projects in data collection phases. The positive impacts of Roundtable have been identified at the level of the staff nurse and the organization as a whole. This article describes the role of the clinical nurse specialist in the development and implementation of the Research Roundtable.

The exploration of the lived experience of the graduate nurse making the transition to registered nurse during the first year of practice.

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the transition period of graduate nurses. A phenomenological research approach was used to explore the lived experiences of graduate nurses during their first year of employment. Content analysis resulted in five thematic areas identified as indicators of a positive transition experience. The findings of this study provide information for staff development instructors, nurse managers, and nurse administrators in identifying practice environment characteristics and initiatives that promote a positive transition period for graduate nurses and increased retention in initial areas of nursing practice.

Improving medication calculation skills of practicing nurses and senior nursing students: a pilot study.

Medication administration is an essential nursing competency as calculation difficulties can lead to serious medication errors. Nurses involved in staff education need to be aware of methods to assess for computation difficulty and develop strategies for nurses to improve their computation abilities. The purposes of this quasi-experimental pilot study were to assess the medication calculation skills of nurses and nursing students and to determine the effectiveness of teaching strategies aimed at improving these skills.