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.
Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Hans-Knöll Strasse, Jena, Germany. rproulx@bgc-jena.mpg.de
Raphaël
R
Proulx
Christian
C
Wirth
Winfried
W
Voigt
Alexandra
A
Weigelt
Christiane
C
Roscher
Sabine
S
Attinger
Jussi
J
Baade
Romain L
RL
Barnard
Nina
N
Buchmann
François
F
Buscot
Nico
N
Eisenhauer
Markus
M
Fischer
Gerd
G
Gleixner
Stefan
S
Halle
Anke
A
Hildebrandt
Esther
E
Kowalski
Annely
A
Kuu
Markus
M
Lange
Alex
A
Milcu
Pascal A
PA
Niklaus
Yvonne
Y
Oelmann
Stephan
S
Rosenkranz
Alexander
A
Sabais
Christoph
C
Scherber
Michael
M
Scherer-Lorenzen
Stefan
S
Scheu
Ernst-Detlef
ED
Schulze
Jens
J
Schumacher
Guido
G
Schwichtenberg
Jean-François
JF
Soussana
Vicky M
VM
Temperton
Wolfgang W
WW
Weisser
Wolfgang
W
Wilcke
Bernhard
B
Schmid
D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D018533:Biomass; D017753:Ecosystem; D006109:Poaceae / Q000502:physiology*