Our study shows that the two effects can hardly be disentangled at low levels of genotypic richness and that allelic richness may have been a hidden treatment in previous experiments reporting the positive effect of genotypic diversity on resistance and resilience of experimental populations.
The first important result is the relationship between genotypic and allelic richness at the low levels of genotypic richness typically used thus far in similar experiments.
Current knowledge suggests a high redundancy of soil organism communities, i.e. saturation of function at low levels of species richness.
There is only very little evidence that increased phenological complementarity can have a positive effect on annual productivity in early successional forb communities, although such an effect might be stronger at low levels of species richness [48].
However, this extreme level of correlation is only valid at very low levels of genotypic richness such as those typically used in manipulative experiments ([ 60]; Figure 1a).
In fact, a recent study based on both simulated and observational data reported that such a correlation, when it exists, is limited to extremely low levels of genotypic richness comparable to those manipulated experimentally, but seldom found in natural populations [ 60].
In general, serpentine plant communities have low levels of productivity, species richness, and plant cover.
If so, T-cell depletion would not be a likely cause for the low levels of individual allelic richness in limnetics, and would probably not cause the observed divergence in allele number between sympatric species.
Our work suggests that a major component of our study landscape is currently entering the forest stage (canopy closure) characterized by low levels of vascular plant species richness and cover.
In the beech forest patches, a large proportion of edge, low tree densities and low levels of variety of woody debris caused a decrease of wood-inhabiting fungal richness.
