Diversity promotes temporal stability across levels of ecosystem organization in experimental grasslands.
The diversity-stability hypothesis states that current losses of biodiversity can impair the ability of an ecosystem to dampen the effect of environmental perturbations on its functioning. Using data from a long-term and comprehensive biodiversity experiment, we quantified the temporal stability of 42 variables characterizing twelve ecological functions in managed grassland plots varying in plant species richness. We demonstrate that diversity increases stability i) across trophic levels (producer, consumer), ii) at both the system (community, ecosystem) and the component levels (population, functional group, phylogenetic clade), and iii) primarily for aboveground rather than belowground processes. Temporal synchronization across studied variables was mostly unaffected with increasing species richness. This study provides the strongest empirical support so far that diversity promotes stability across different ecological functions and levels of ecosystem organization in grasslands.
Proulx
Raphaël
R
Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Hans-Knöll Strasse, Jena, Germany. rproulx@bgc-jena.mpg.de
Wirth
Christian
C
Voigt
Winfried
W
Weigelt
Alexandra
A
Roscher
Christiane
C
Attinger
Sabine
S
Baade
Jussi
J
Barnard
Romain L
RL
Buchmann
Nina
N
Buscot
François
F
Eisenhauer
Nico
N
Fischer
Markus
M
Gleixner
Gerd
G
Halle
Stefan
S
Hildebrandt
Anke
A
Kowalski
Esther
E
Kuu
Annely
A
Lange
Markus
M
Milcu
Alex
A
Niklaus
Pascal A
PA
Oelmann
Yvonne
Y
Rosenkranz
Stephan
S
Sabais
Alexander
A
Scherber
Christoph
C
Scherer-Lorenzen
Michael
M
Scheu
Stefan
S
Schulze
Ernst-Detlef
ED
Schumacher
Jens
J
Schwichtenberg
Guido
G
Soussana
Jean-François
JF
Temperton
Vicky M
VM
Weisser
Wolfgang W
WW
Wilcke
Wolfgang
W
Schmid
Bernhard
B
D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D018533:Biomass; D017753:Ecosystem; D006109:Poaceae / Q000502:physiology*