Fig. 2. Phenology of plant and soil processes in response to
plant diversity treatments in the Jena Experiment. The phenology of (A)
plant height, (B) greenness, (C) root production, and (D) detritivore
feeding activity from March 2021 to September 2021 for aboveground
activity, and to February 2022 for belowground activity. The lines show
the average monthly value for each species-richness level, with darker
shades of green (aboveground) and brown (belowground) indicating higher
plant species richness. The blue transparent stripes indicate the two
mowing periods (14-25.06 and 13-24.09).
Plant diversity effects on the synchrony of
aboveground-belowground
phenology
Plant species richness affected the phenological synchrony of several
response variables (Fig. 3), especially during the early growing season
in spring (pre-mowing, Fig. 3a, b). Plant species richness increased
phenological synchrony between plant community height and greenness,
plant community height and root production, and greenness and root
production. In contrast, plant functional group richness reduced
phenological synchrony between greenness and root production and plant
community height and detritivore feeding activity. This can be seen as a
shift from negative r values to r values around zero.
During summer (post-mowing period, Fig. 3b, e), increasing species
richness shifted the synchrony between plant community height and
greenness from a light asynchrony to a light-positive synchronous
pattern. However, increasing plant functional group richness decoupled
greenness and detritivore feeding activity (i.e. shift toward no
correlation between response variables) (Fig. 3e). No significant plant
diversity effects on phenological synchrony were observed over winter
(Fig. 3c, f).