The consequences of the root collaboration gradient: effects on plant communities and ecosystem functioning?

The overarching idea for the workshop is to derive a conceptual framework evaluating the potential importance of the root collaboration gradient - as the new part of the root economics space (RES; Bergmann et al 2020; Weigelt et al 2021) - for plant community performance and ecosystem function. Our new addition to the RES allows us to place species along a collaboration gradient from species that ‘do it yourself’ for their resource acquisition strategy to species that ‘outsource’ resource acquisition to mycorrhizal fungi. Thus, our central question is: how do interactions among ‘do-it-yourself’ and ‘outsourcing’ plant species within a plant community affect:  1) performance of the community over time and 2) ecosystem functioning. In essence, we aim to move from understanding species-specific root trait variation to understanding the functional role of root trait variation in interactions with other species, as well as the implications for ecosystem function.