Dominance Experiment

(abandoned since 2019)

Dominance Experiment
In the main experiment, species are chosen randomly from a large species pool, and the design does not allow for the separation of effects of individual species from effects of diversity. The dominance experiment was especially designed to disentangle the effects of species richness per se and the presence/absence of particular single dominant species or particular pairs of dominant species.

Small Replicates (abondoned in 2007)
To assess within-mixture variability and its dependence on diversity, all species mixtures from 1-16 species and the 60-species mixtures are identically replicated on small plots (=82 plots). Control plots (bare ground, free succession and succession with mowing) are also present (=12 plots). The replicates of the main experiment have been used to study effects of evenness and density of plant species.