Temporal stabilizing effects of species richness and seed arrangement on grassland biomass production

1. The extent to which individuals experience inter- and intraspecific interactions through their spatial arrangements within diverse plant communities, whether because of confounding effects of species richness, evenness, or direct changes in species patch sizes on their neighborhood relationships, could affect grassland biomass production and its stability at community scales. Elucidating the ways in which neighborhood effects and species richness contribute to such community responses has important implications for how practitioners establish grasslands to meet forage production and conservation goals.
2. We assessed the effects of altering plant species richness (3 levels: 2, 4, or 8 forage species per plot) and seed arrangements (4 levels: species mixed and seeded or seeded in 0.0625 m2, 0.25 m2, or 1.0 m2 single-species patches while maintaining plot-scale species evenness) on aboveground biomass production and its temporal stability in developing grasslands seeded with a suite o...