High below-ground bud abundance increases ecosystem recovery from drought across arid and semiarid grasslands

1. Asexual reproduction plays a fundamental role in the structure, dynamics and persistence of perennial grasslands. Thus, assessing how asexual reproductive traits of plant communities respond to drought may be key for understanding grassland resistance to drought and recovery following drought. 2. Here, we quantified three asexual reproductive traits (i.e. above-ground tiller abundance, below-ground bud abundance and the ratio of tillers to buds) during a 4-year severe drought and a 2-year drought recovery period in four grasslands that spanned an aridity gradient in northern China. We also assessed the relationship between these traits and the resistance and recovery of above-ground net primary productivity (ANPP). 3. We found that drought had limited and largely inconsistent effects on asexual reproduction among drought and recovery years and grasslands overall. Drought increased tiller abundance in the first treatment year and reduced bud banks by the fourth treatment year across grasslands. However, neither of the three asexual reproductive traits were correlated with drought resistance of ANPP. Drought legacies differed among the four grasslands with positive, negative and no legacies evident for the three asexual reproductive traits, and no clear relationship with aridity. Bud banks and tiller to bud ratio decreased and increased, respectively, in the first recovery year, but not in the second recovery year. In contrast to drought resistance, community bud abundance was strongly related to recovery, such that communities with higher bud abundance had greater ANPP recovery following drought. 4. Synthesis. These results suggest that asexual reproductive traits may be important drivers of ecosystem recovery after drought, but that variable responses of these asexual reproduction traits during drought complicates predictions of overall grassland responses.