Litter and fertilizer effects on the number of seedlings as obtained in a common garden experiment for 75 grassland species used in the seed addition plots of the REX experiment

Agricultural grasslands play an important role in conserving the biodiversity of the European cultural landscape. Both, litter cover and soil nutrient availability are well-known factors that change with grassland management, but it is not well-studied how the germination and seedling growth of multiple grassland species are influenced by their single or combined effects.
We studied the effects of fertilization (100 kg N per year and ha) and litter cover (250 gdw per m2) on germination measured as the number of seedlings germinated. For this, we examined 75 temperate grassland species (16 grass species, 51 forb species, 8 legume species) which were sown as single species in a full factorial microcosm experiment. The microcosm experiment was part of the project SeedDiv within the framework of the DFG-funded joint project Biodiversity Exploratories (https://www.biodiversity-exploratories.de).