Fig. 2

Experimental Design. (a) Plot and species overview. Plant material was collected in the plots of the TBE (grey borders) in the Jena Experiment. We collected shoots of seven grass (light green) and six herb species (dark green) in plots with four different diversity levels (DL). Here, either one (DL1), two (DL2), four (DL4) or eight (DL8) different species were grown per plot. In each plot, we harvested shoots of two replicates. The white arrow indicates the sampling direction, starting at the south end of the TBE. (b) Design overview. Plant material of species in both P1 and P2 were collected at four time points across the growing season in 2017 (May: A, July: B, August: C, October: D). The species pools P1 and P2 were each composed of four grass and four herb species. The three species LEUVUL, PHLPRA and PLALAN, were part of both pools. In total, we collected 512 study samples: 4 seasons x 4 DL x 2 Pool x 8 species x 2 replicates. For a detailed list of the species codes see Table 1.