Are the responses of diversity, evenness and richness driven by the responses of individual species to treatments?
Diversity, evenness and richness were most strongly affected by the soil moisture treatment, and unlike the responses of individual species, there were no interactions between soil moisture and temperature. In fact, there were few interactions over the course of the experiment. Diversity, evenness and richness remained greater in dry plots than in wet plots throughout 2004. Cover of the dominant species Dactylis and Lespedeza, and at times Trifolium, was correlated with diversity and evenness when the species were dominant within the communities. This indicates that responses of the dominant species drive the treatment responses of the community as a whole, probably due to a combination of increased cover and dominance of the key species, and the suppression of other species due to competitive interactions. Cover of Dactylis was greater in wet than in dry plots, and diversity and evenness were both lower in wet than in dry plots. In addition, Dactylis was negatively correlated with div
